TY - JOUR
T1 - The Air-temperature Response to Green/blue-infrastructure Evaluation Tool (TARGET v1.0)
T2 - An efficient and user-friendly model of city cooling
AU - Broadbent, Ashley M.
AU - Coutts, Andrew M.
AU - Nice, Kerry A.
AU - Demuzere, Matthias
AU - Scott Krayenhoff, E.
AU - Tapper, Nigel J.
AU - Wouters, Hendrik
PY - 2019/2/20
Y1 - 2019/2/20
N2 - The adverse impacts of urban heat and global climate change are leading policymakers to consider green and blue infrastructure (GBI) for heat mitigation benefits. Though many models exist to evaluate the cooling impacts of GBI, their complexity and computational demand leaves most of them largely inaccessible to those without specialist expertise and computing facilities. Here a new model called The Air-temperature Response to Green/blue-infrastructure Evaluation Tool (TARGET) is presented. TARGET is designed to be efficient and easy to use, with fewer user-defined parameters and less model input data required than other urban climate models. TARGET can be used to model average street-level air temperature at canyon-to-block scales (e.g. 100 m resolution), meaning it can be used to assess temperature impacts of suburb-to-city-scale GBI proposals. The model aims to balance realistic representation of physical processes and computation efficiency. An evaluation against two different datasets shows that TARGET can reproduce the magnitude and patterns of both air temperature and surface temperature within suburban environments. To demonstrate the utility of the model for planners and policymakers, the results from two precinct-scale heat mitigation scenarios are presented. TARGET is available to the public, and ongoing development, including a graphical user interface, is planned for future work.
AB - The adverse impacts of urban heat and global climate change are leading policymakers to consider green and blue infrastructure (GBI) for heat mitigation benefits. Though many models exist to evaluate the cooling impacts of GBI, their complexity and computational demand leaves most of them largely inaccessible to those without specialist expertise and computing facilities. Here a new model called The Air-temperature Response to Green/blue-infrastructure Evaluation Tool (TARGET) is presented. TARGET is designed to be efficient and easy to use, with fewer user-defined parameters and less model input data required than other urban climate models. TARGET can be used to model average street-level air temperature at canyon-to-block scales (e.g. 100 m resolution), meaning it can be used to assess temperature impacts of suburb-to-city-scale GBI proposals. The model aims to balance realistic representation of physical processes and computation efficiency. An evaluation against two different datasets shows that TARGET can reproduce the magnitude and patterns of both air temperature and surface temperature within suburban environments. To demonstrate the utility of the model for planners and policymakers, the results from two precinct-scale heat mitigation scenarios are presented. TARGET is available to the public, and ongoing development, including a graphical user interface, is planned for future work.
KW - heat island
KW - urban climate
KW - canopy model
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85062065976&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.5194/gmd-12-785-2019
DO - 10.5194/gmd-12-785-2019
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85062065976
VL - 12
SP - 785
EP - 803
JO - Geoscientific Model Development
JF - Geoscientific Model Development
SN - 1991-959X
IS - 2
ER -