TY - JOUR
T1 - GEO4PALM v1.1
T2 - an open-source geospatial data processing toolkit for the PALM model system
AU - Lin, Dongqi
AU - Zhang, Jiawei
AU - Khan, Basit
AU - Katurji, Marwan
AU - Revell, Laura E.
N1 - Funding Information:
Laura Revell appreciates the support from the Rutherford Discovery Fellowships from the New Zealand Government funding, administered by the Royal Society Te Apārangi. We performed PALM simulations presented in this study on New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI) high-performance computing facilities. GEO4PALM development was conducted on the School of Earth and Environment (SEE) computing cluster and the University of Canterbury high-performance research computing cluster (RCC). The early development of GEO4PALM was inspired by the WRF2PALM code (now replaced by the WRF4PALM toolkit) developed by Ricardo Faria from the Oceanic Observatory of Madeira. We would like to acknowledge Alena Malyarenko from the University of Canterbury for internal proofreading of the manuscript. We would like to thank all the open-source Python package developers. Without their efforts, GEO4PALM could not have been built.
Funding Information:
The contributions of Dongqi Lin, Jiawei Zhang, and Marwan Katurji were funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) project “Extreme wildfire: Our new reality – are we ready?” (grant no. C04X2103). Jiawei Zhang also received support from the MBIE project “Vive la résistance – achieving long-term success in managing wilding conifer invasions” (grant no. CO4X2102). Marwan Katurji was also supported by the Royal Society Te Apārangi of New Zealand (grant no. RDF-UOC1701). The contribution of Basit Khan was supported by the MOSAIK-2 project, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) (grant no. 01LP1911H), and by the Mubadala Arabian Center for Climate and Environmental Sciences (ACCESS), through the New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Research Institute (grant no. CG009). Open-access publishing was facilitated with the support of the University of Canterbury Library Open Access Fund.
Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright:
PY - 2024/1/31
Y1 - 2024/1/31
N2 - A geospatial data processing tool, GEO4PALM, has been developed to generate geospatial static input for the Parallelized Large-Eddy Simulation (PALM) model system. PALM is a community-driven large-eddy simulation model for atmospheric and environmental research. Throughout PALM's 20-year development, research interests have been increasing in its application to realistic conditions, especially for urban areas. For such applications, geospatial static input is essential. Although abundant geospatial data are accessible worldwide, geospatial data availability and quality are highly variable and inconsistent. Currently, the geospatial static input generation tools in the PALM community heavily rely on users for data acquisition and pre-processing. New PALM users face large obstacles, including significant time commitments, to gain the knowledge needed to be able to pre-process geospatial data for PALM. Expertise beyond atmospheric and environmental research is frequently needed to understand the data sets required by PALM. Here, we present GEO4PALM, which is a free and open-source tool. GEO4PALM helps users generate PALM static input files with a simple, homogenised, and standardised process. GEO4PALM is compatible with geospatial data obtained from any source, provided that the data sets comply with standard geo-information formats. Users can either provide existing geospatial data sets or use the embedded data interfaces to download geo-information data from free online sources for any global geographic area of interest. All online data sets incorporated in GEO4PALM are globally available, with several data sets having the finest resolution of 1m. In addition, GEO4PALM provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for PALM domain configuration and visualisation. Two application examples demonstrate successful PALM simulations driven by geospatial input generated by GEO4PALM using different geospatial data sources for Berlin, Germany, and Otautahi/Christchurch, New Zealand. GEO4PALM provides an easy and efficient way for PALM users to configure and conduct PALM simulations for applications and investigations such as urban heat island effects, air pollution dispersion, renewable energy resourcing, and weather-related hazard forecasting. The wide applicability of GEO4PALM makes PALM more accessible to a wider user base in the scientific community.
AB - A geospatial data processing tool, GEO4PALM, has been developed to generate geospatial static input for the Parallelized Large-Eddy Simulation (PALM) model system. PALM is a community-driven large-eddy simulation model for atmospheric and environmental research. Throughout PALM's 20-year development, research interests have been increasing in its application to realistic conditions, especially for urban areas. For such applications, geospatial static input is essential. Although abundant geospatial data are accessible worldwide, geospatial data availability and quality are highly variable and inconsistent. Currently, the geospatial static input generation tools in the PALM community heavily rely on users for data acquisition and pre-processing. New PALM users face large obstacles, including significant time commitments, to gain the knowledge needed to be able to pre-process geospatial data for PALM. Expertise beyond atmospheric and environmental research is frequently needed to understand the data sets required by PALM. Here, we present GEO4PALM, which is a free and open-source tool. GEO4PALM helps users generate PALM static input files with a simple, homogenised, and standardised process. GEO4PALM is compatible with geospatial data obtained from any source, provided that the data sets comply with standard geo-information formats. Users can either provide existing geospatial data sets or use the embedded data interfaces to download geo-information data from free online sources for any global geographic area of interest. All online data sets incorporated in GEO4PALM are globally available, with several data sets having the finest resolution of 1m. In addition, GEO4PALM provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for PALM domain configuration and visualisation. Two application examples demonstrate successful PALM simulations driven by geospatial input generated by GEO4PALM using different geospatial data sources for Berlin, Germany, and Otautahi/Christchurch, New Zealand. GEO4PALM provides an easy and efficient way for PALM users to configure and conduct PALM simulations for applications and investigations such as urban heat island effects, air pollution dispersion, renewable energy resourcing, and weather-related hazard forecasting. The wide applicability of GEO4PALM makes PALM more accessible to a wider user base in the scientific community.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85186094640&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.5194/gmd-17-815-2024
DO - 10.5194/gmd-17-815-2024
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85186094640
SN - 1991-959X
VL - 17
SP - 815
EP - 845
JO - Geoscientific Model Development
JF - Geoscientific Model Development
IS - 2
ER -
