Abstract
This review paper provides an overview of current understanding of local scale flows and dispersion with attention to the urban canopy layer and related spatial and temporal scales. The presence of buildings and topographic features are responsible for a vast number of processes ranging from simple drag and friction effects, wakes, corner vortices, flow separation and reattachment to differential heating leading to local thermal circulation. In highlighting key processes at various spatial-temporal scales, it will be shown lesson learnt from recent laboratory and field experiments. Progress made in understanding physical mechanisms occurring in streets, between groups of buildings and above, has inspired the advance of new conceptual models suitable for operational applications and development of sub-grid parameterizations within “urbanized” mesoscale weather prediction models. Among recent developed conceptual framework the one of city breathability is an example of how integrated knowledge (from physics-based understanding to computational fluid dynamics) can capture salient aspects of ventilation and dispersion in cities. After reviewing the relevant processes, the role of buildings, urban morphology and thermal characteristics are examined in view of delineating future developments and challenges.
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Acknowledgements
The author wish to acknowledge gratefully the Scientific Committee and Local Organizers of the 35TH “International Technical Meeting on Air Pollution Modelling and Its Applications (ITM)” Conference for the opportunity to write this contribution and generously support my participation.
The work has been partly supported by iSCAPE (Improving Smart Control of Air Pollution in Europe) project, which is funded through the European Community’s H2020 Programme (H2020-SC5-04-2015) under the Grant Agreement No. 689954. Also, the author wishes to gratefully acknowledge the long standing collaboration with Profs. R. Britter, Prof. J. Fernando, Dr. D. Carruthers, Prof. J. Hunt, and the many students and collaborators especially Dr. R. Buccolieri and Dr. L. Leo with whom the author have developed with time several of the ideas and results reported here.
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Di Sabatino, S. (2018). Progress in Local Scale Flow and Dispersion Modelling. In: Mensink, C., Kallos, G. (eds) Air Pollution Modeling and its Application XXV. ITM 2016. Springer Proceedings in Complexity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57645-9_41
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57645-9_41
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