A Point-Cloud Solar Radiation Tool

Current software solutions for solar-radiation modeling in 3D focus on the urban environment. Most of published tools do not implement methods to consider complex objects, such as greenery their models or they expect a rather mesh represent objects. Their use an environment that is difficult geometrically, vegetation-covered areas, limited. In this paper, we present newly developed tool focused areas with vegetation. The uses voxel representations space based point-cloud data calculate illumination and ESRA model estimate direct, diffuse, global irradiation specified time range. We demonstrate capabilities forested mountain area Suchá valley Hight Tatra mountains (Slovakia) also Castle Hill Bratislava greenery. compare r.sun module GRASS GIS Area Solar Radiation ArcGIS using generated from digital-terrain Kamenistá High Slovakia. results suggest higher detail rugged terrain comparable smooth surfaces when considering its purpose tool. performance tested different hardware input data. processing times are less than 8 min, GB memory used 4 16 core processors point clouds larger 100,000 points. is, therefore, easily usable common computers.