Publication Date:
2018-10-08
Description:
The adverse impacts of urban heat and global climate change are leading policy-makers 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 street level air temperature at fine spatial scales (e.g. 30m), meaning it can be used at the street, precinct, or city scales. 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 policy-makers, the results from two precinct-scale heat mitigation scenarios are presented. TARGET will be made available to the public and ongoing development, including a graphical user interface, is planned for future work.
Print ISSN:
1991-9611
Electronic ISSN:
1991-962X
Topics:
Geosciences
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