From meso-scale to street-scale: a downscaling procedure using statistical and CFD models.The Lisbon case study

Within the scope of the European ATREUS network were developed methodologies aiming at the optimization of the energy consumption of buildings in relation to their cooling and heating requirements. These are strongly related to the micro-climatic conditions that develop within the vicinity of buildings and particularly the wind speed, temperature and humidity. On the large scale we used the ECMWF ERA-40 archive and the meso-scale model MM5 to provide solutions without detailed analysis of the near-surface region. We then used two methodologies in order to produce detailed micro-meteorological profiles within a real urban canopy. The first method is based on the exchange of momentum and mass between the urban canopy and the urban boundary layer above, by using spatially-averaged wind profiles over the canopy volume. The second is based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations, which provide high-resolution details on the spatial distribution of the wind and temperature