1.1. Introduction

1.1.1. Topics to be Covered

The three main software tools that will be used in the workshop are:

  • UMEP - this is an urban climate services tool that has a large number of tools and models. It is an application add-on to QGIS (Lindberg et al. 2018)

  • SUEWS - this is an energy, water and carbon balance model that can be used to simulate urban and non-urban areas (Järvi et al. 2011). This is both a standalone model and is also within UMEP. The UMEP environment is a good place to start to use SUEWS.

  • SuPy - this is a Python interface to SUEWS which allows SUEWS to be rapidly used to address research questions (Sun and Grimmond 2019). It can also be used to couple SUEWS to other programs (e.g. DASH. STEBBS, EnergyPlus).

Two user environments that we will use are:

  • QGIS - a geographic information system for analysing spatial data.

  • Jupyter Notebooks - this allows for a project to be developed with comments, code, graphics etc, that contains all of the analyses of a project.

There are two main programming languages involved in the software

  • Python - the QGIS add-ins are written in Python as is SuPy. This has the advantage of having a large number of code libraries for graphics, statistics, etc.

  • Fortran - SUEWS is written in this. This has the advantage of being more computationally efficient for processing larger volumes of data. It is also the language that many weather and climate models are written in.

SUEWS coupling

  • SUEWS is in UMEP, SuPy, and coupled to WRF, as well as being a standalone code.

  • SUEWS can be forced (i.e. the meteorological data that is needed to run the model) in the following way:

    • Observations

    • ERA5 data (or other reanalysis data)

    • WRF (or other weather/climate model that it is coupled to)

    • Climate projections

SUEWS requires the urban form and function to be characterised

  • form (e.g. land cover, building heights)

  • function (e.g. population density, energy use diurnal pattern for work days and non-work days, irrigation behaviour, snow clearing behaviour)

These characteristics need to be provided for each grid (or spatial unit) to be modelled. A spatial unit does not need to be a rectangular grid (if not within a weather/climate model), but can be, for example, census data or other governance related spatial units.

Some background reading for the Workshop will help you understand the models and provide details options that will be useful later.

1.1.2. People

Hosted By

Contributors to the workshop

  • Kit Benjamin (tester of all the Workshop activities)

  • Vicky Lucas, Sonja Thoms (and others) at IEA, University of Reading (Videos)

  • Hamid Omidvar (Jupyter videos, Python/Jupyter tutorials), Meg Stretton (Jupyter Video)

  • Nils Wallenberg and Oskar Bäcklin (GIS and UMEP assistants during the Workshop)

1.1.3. Acknowledgements

  • ERC Synergy urbisphere

  • Newton Fund/Met Office CSSP China

  • NERC

  • FORMAS: Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development

A large number of individuals have worked on the development of the software (SUEWS Grimmond et al. 2020, UMEP Lindberg et al. 2020, SuPy Sun et al. 2020) and the collection of the various datasets that are used in the tutorials. These are all gratefully acknowledged.

We thank the following organisations whose data are used, including:

  • AmeriFlux

  • ECMWF ERA5

  • LUMA

1.1.4. Feedback

  • If you find problems with the Manuals (Workshop, `UMEP <, SUEWS, SuPy) please raise a GitHub issue so it can be fixed for others in the group (saving everyone time)

  • Do you have suggestions for other tutorials?

  • What other topics would you like to see covered? Please add to GitHub or contact Sue

Tip

  1. Stuck? the help and FAQ pages are useful places to start.

  2. Please report workshop manual issues at GitHub Issues. Go from the page with the problem - an automatical link will be inserted. Thanks.