Assessing the Impacts of Extreme Weather on Local-Scale Hazards in Urban
Districts
Abstract
Airflows over complex geometrical surfaces such as complex terrain and
densely built urban districts are highly turbulent and sometimes become
a threat under disturbed weather conditions. Among the meteorological
disturbances, the landfalls of tropical cyclones cause strong winds and
may lead to severe damages in populated urban areas and in mountainous
areas. Because gusty winds are primarily a cause for damages, diagnosing
and predicting quantitatively wind and turbulent characteristics are
critically important. In order to assess strong wind hazards in complex
urban areas, this study uses a large-eddy-simulation (LES) model with
buildings and structures explicitly resolved at an O(1 m) grid spacing.
With such a building-resolving LES model, we have analyzed turbulent
airflows in urban districts of Japanese major cities and have found that
the LES model is capable of estimating the magnitude of gusty winds and
turbulent fluctuations. In order to improve the accuracy in representing
the properties of airflows, we have developed a data assimilation method
which incorporates observed turbulence. The proposed data assimilation
method used a vibration equation which can incorporate turbulence winds
toward target mean winds while maintaining small-scale turbulent
fluctuations and was applied for airflows in actual urban districts of
Kyoto City by incorporating data obtained from meteorological
observations located in Kyoto. We have concluded that the data
assimilation method using the vibration equation successfully nudges
toward the target mean winds while maintaining small-scale turbulent
fluctuations well. Our recent LES analyses of airflows in urban
districts have been extended to studies related to the impact assessment
of and the adaptation to climate change in urban areas. A
building-resolving LES model has become a practical tool to more applied
side of turbulent airflow analysis.