Correlation between Urban Morphology and Wind Environment in Digital City using GIS and CFD Simulations

Abstract

Digital city technology has been used increasingly in planning and architectural design, and it has become a powerful means for solving problems faced in a city. In China, more than 61% of the population will live in cities by 2020; this proportion will increase to 69% by 2030. The city’s internal environment is deteriorating. Using information technology, this study focuses on both the urban and the residential neighbourhood scale to explore the relationship between the urban morphology and the urban wind environment. At the urban scale, using geographic information system (GIS)-based spatial analysis and calculating the frontal area density (FAD) and roughness length, the building density and building volume density (BVD) can help improve the urban wind environment. At the residential neighbourhood scale, through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, the building density has a strongly linear relationship with the average pedestrian wind speed; however, the floor area ratio, average building height, and average wind speed show weak correlation.