High Fidelity Simulation of Atmospheric Dispersion

Understanding the dispersion of pollutants in atmospheric flow is of vital importance for infrastructure planning and urban development. Dstl is interested in atmospheric dispersion prediction to forecast the spread of chemical and biological hazards in outdoor and indoor environments. To provide analyses in minimal time, empirical approaches, like Gaussian puff methods and single or multizone models, are presently used. Puff methods assume an idealised outdoor emission plume and neglect interaction with complex topologies. Zone models can provide reasonable predictions of dispersion through buildings, but their applicability is questionable for large spaces, where their homogeneous mixing assumption is invalid