Including trees in the numerical simulations of the wind flow in urban areas: Should we care?

TLDR

Urban wind engineering studies often ignore or oversimplify the dynamic influence of trees, despite their abundance in cities. This study examines how incorporating trees into numerical wind flow simulations affects results for urban areas. The authors compare three modeling strategies—basic (no tree effects), implicit (surface parameterization), and explicit (porous media representation)—across diverse test cases varying wind direction, foliage density, and planting configurations. Results show that only the explicit approach captures significant tree effects, indicating that tree influence depends on wind direction, foliage density, and urban layout, and must be explicitly modeled to accurately simulate urban wind flow.

Abstract

Although trees are numerous in urban areas, their dynamic effects on the wind flow are usually approximated or neglected altogether in many wind engineering studies, especially those based on numerical modeling. This study investigates the effect of the inclusion of trees in numerical simulations of wind flow in urban area. Three approaches are used to include the dynamic effect of trees: the basic approach (tree effects are neglected), the implicit approach (tree effects are included in the surface parameterizations), and the explicit approach (trees are represented by porous media). Several test cases have been adopted in order to cover a wide range of urban complexities, wind directions, foliage densities, and tree planting configurations. The results show that there are significant effects of trees when the explicit approach is used compared to the basic and the implicit approaches. Thus tree effects need to be considered using an explicit approach to simulate wind flow in urban area. Also, many parameters such as wind direction, foliage density, and urban configuration are believed to influence the intensity of trees effects. This study emphasizes the importance to explicitly consider the effects of trees in numerical model investigations for the wind flow in urban areas.