KPF’s Environmental Performance Software Developer shared how the firm developed a real-time thermal comfort simulation app for outdoor environments during an International Building Performance Simulation Association Simulation Showcase webinar on December 3rd.
Although weather and climate patterns happen at a regional or even continental scale, the human thermal experience in an urban space is modified by small-scale factors, such as shade from trees, a cooling breeze, or hot asphalt on a summer day. To quantify these experiences and map how a person would experience an outdoor environment in New York City in real time, KPF’s Applied Technology and Environmental Performance teams developed a comprehensive digital twin of Bryant Park’s thermal microclimate.
During the December 3rd webinar, Quoc explained how the team developed a custom application to gather real-time forecasts and historical data for temperature, sky coverage, wind, humidity, and solar radiation from multiple sources to offer a complete picture of conditions in every corner of the park. By combining this data with detailed, 3D building geometry, KPF’s custom digital model runs a suite of environmental simulations including computational fluid dynamics (CFD), solar radiation, and mean radiant temperature models, to quantify how the built environment impacts comfort.
Read more about the tool here and register for the webinar here.
