Published August 30, 2019 | Version v1.0
Software Open

Urban Tethys-Chloris (UT&C v1.0)

Creators

  • 1. ETH Zurich, Future Cities Laboratory, Singapore-ETH Centre, Singapore; Institute of Environmental Engineering, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
  • 2. Institute of Environmental Engineering, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Contributors

  • 1. Institute of Environmental Engineering, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK
  • 2. Institute of Environmental Engineering, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
  • 3. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, NJ, USA
  • 4. School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University, Singapore
  • 5. School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, Monash University, Clayton, Australia; Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities, Melbourne, Australia
  • 6. Department of Civil Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, Australia
  • 7. School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, Monash University, Clayton, Australia; Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities, Melbourne, Australia; Transport, Health, and Urban Design Hub, Faculty of Architecture, Building, and Planning, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia;
  • 8. Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore
  • 9. Centre for Urban Greenery and Ecology, National Parks Board, Singapore
  • 10. School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA; School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA

Description

Urban Tethys-Chloris (UT&C v1.0) is a mechanistic urban ecohydrological model combining principles of ecohydrological land surface modelling with urban canopy modelling. UT&C is a fully coupled energy and water balance model that calculates 2 m air temperature, 2 m humidity, and surface temperatures. It explicitly resolves biophysical and ecophysiological characteristics of ground vegetation, urban trees, and green roofs and models all urban water fluxes including evapotranspiration, canopy interception, infiltration, and soil moisture transport. UT&C accounts for variations in urban densities, building properties, and urban irrigation schemes. Hence, the model is able to account for the effects of different plant types on the urban climate and hydrology, as well as the effects of the urban environment on plant well-being and performance. UT&C is one of the first urban canyon parameterizations to include detailed ecohydrology. Its low computational demand allows for analyses spanning multiple years with an hourly time step, therefore, facilitating long-term and seasonal analysis.

The model development and validation is presented in:

Naika Meili, Gabriele Manoli, Paolo Burlando, Elie Bou-Zeid, Winston T.L. Chow, Andrew
M. Coutts, Edoardo Daly, Kerry A. Nice, Matthias Roth, Nigel J. Tapper, Erik Velasco,
Enrique R. Vivoni, and Simone Fatichi (2019). An urban ecohydrological model to quantify the effect of vegetation
on urban climate and hydrology (UT&C v1.0), Geoscientific Model Development, under review

Notes

Data and codes are open and free for scientific and educational purposes but their use should comply with a fair use policy. Specifically, proper acknowledgment and citations should be given to the model and all data used in a peer reviewed publication. For any questions, please contact Naika Meili (meili@ifu.baug.ethz.ch) or Simone Fatichi (fatichi@ifu.baug.ethz.ch). The research was conducted at the Future Cities Laboratory at the Singapore-ETH Centre, which was established collaboratively between ETH Zurich and Singapore's National Research Foundation (FI370074016) under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise programme. GM was supported by the "The Branco Weiss Fellowship - Society in Science" administered by ETH Zurich. EV acknowledges a research fellowship granted by the Centre for Urban Greenery and Ecology of Singapore's National Parks Board.

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UTC_Model_Code.zip

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