MITRE’s urban microscale weather and climate resiliency application analyzes the impacts of hyperlocal weather, particularly heat stress, on cities and communities. It provides services to assess alternative urban weather impact mitigation strategies using input from simulation-based microscale weather and climate data.
Urban Microscale Climate Resilience Application
The effect of heat in a city varies greatly from one neighborhood or city block to another. MITRE has developed a hyperlocal weather and heat stress evaluation application, leveraging microscale weather modeling technology. This application is designed for urban planners, public health officials, “smart city” principals, and urban climate sustainability, resiliency, and environmental justice leaders. The tool helps visualize and better understand the effect of heat—in an evolving and ever-changing built environment—at the street and neighborhood level.
MITRE’s urban microscale weather and climate resiliency application includes:
- Urban building and land-use modification features, functions, and software for alternative urban design and micro-weather or climate impact. It also includes capabilities to modify:
- Road surface and rooftop reflectance properties.
- Direction radiation from tree canopies based on tree type (capturing shaded temperature effects for different tree types and tree canopy coverage in cities).
- Water temperature of rivers or nearby bodies of water.
- Translation and visualization of native weather outputs from microscale weather model to direct measures of heat stress, including Heat Index and Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) within and across urban and suburban areas.
- Diff4Comfort metric, calculation, visualization, and presentation of results. Diff4Comfort is a metric for discrete assessment of a building's energy needs to reach 'comfort' given temp, moisture, and winds in the external environment.
- User interface workflow and design for intuitive use by federal, state, and city governments and support organizations.
MITRE’s unique application can help inform city officials of multiple ways to alleviate heat impacts in critical areas, thus protecting vulnerable populations.
For more detailed information on MITRE’s urban microscale climate resilience application or licensing options, contact MITRE’s Technology Transfer Office at techtransfer@mitre.org.