This paper examines the method to simulate heat balances on building and urban surfaces by combining the 3D CAD-based thermal environment simulator with 3D steady RANS CFD simulations. The simulation results of the distribution of convective heat transfer coefficient in an urban canyon model are compared with that of a wind tunnel experiment. The effects of building geometries, including verand...

The paper presents a new 3D semantic building model dedicated to urban development. It provides the following special semantic features: storeys, passages, opening objects, and building variants, modelling different levels of detail and design respectively temporal variants. The model also includes a parametric part supporting easy generation of buildings and building variants in the urban desi...

Solar energy, as a clean and renewable resource is becoming increasingly important in the global context of climate change and energy crisis. Utilization of solar energy in urban areas is of great importance in urban energy planning, environmental conservation, and sustainable development. However, available spaces for solar panel installation in cities are quite limited except for building roo...

We investigate the potential of combined features of aerial images and high-resolution interferometric SAR (InSAR) data for building detection in urban areas. It is shown that completeness and correctness may be increased if we integrate both InSAR double-bounce lines and 3D lines of stereo data in addition to building hints of a single optical orthophoto. In order to exploit context informatio...

The likelihood of line-of-sight (LoS) is an essential component in any radio channel model. It is particularly useful for radio network planning and urban coverage prediction. Empirical LoS models are hard to derive due to a strong dependency on local topology and the need for large measurement datasets. Since buildings are the major obstructions in a dense urban environment, we propose a new t...

Thermal infrared imagery of urban areas became interesting for urban climate investigations and thermal building inspections. Using a flying platform such as UAV or a helicopter for the acquisition and combining the thermal data with the 3D building models via texturing delivers a valuable groundwork for large-area building inspections. However, such thermal textures are useful for further anal...

Since remote sensing field provides new sensors and techniques to accumulate data on urban region, three-dimensional representation of these regions gained much interest for various applications. Three-dimensional urban region representation can be used for detailed urban monitoring, change and damage detection purposes. In order to obtain three-dimensional representation, one of the easiest an...

Introduction Retrofitting our current building stock and urban infrastructure is a vital part of meeting emissions reductions targets, using energy and resources in a more efficient way and creating sustainable lifestyles. However, one of the key barriers identified is a lack of appropriate modelling and decision support tools to aid long-term planning for sustainable urban retrofitting. In thi...