High fidelity modelling of city-scale environment - a case study

Southampton has been identified as one of the most polluted cities in the UK. The city council and the University of Southampton are taking actions to respond to this and to improve the air quality. So far little is understood about street scale winds. The prediction of such local wind is far beyond the capability of the current operational weather forecast, because it is significantly affected by the heterogeneously placed buildings and the extremely complex terrain. Prediction of the pollutant concentration in the near field (i.e. less than 1 km) of the source or the prediction within street scale is not possible by using the current available air quality models.
Southampton lies at the confluence of the Rivers Test and Itchen, while the three most important point sources, i.e. the dock, the oil refinement site and the airport, are all within 10 km of the city centre. Their dispersion is dominated by the local winds affected by the complex terrain. This makes the numerical and physical modelling even more challenging. Therefore we are proposing to tackle these issues and taking Southampton city as a case study.