A method for simplifying annual wind simulation for pedestrian comfort analysis in consideration of local climate

Architects and urban planners are continuously urged to improve human health and wellbeing in cities. The research presented in this paper investigates a method for accelerating pedestrian wind comfort analysis. The method investigates the reliability of reducing the number of simulated wind directions based on the occurrence frequency instead of an even distribution. The results show a very strong to a fairly strong correlation based on the percentile of area in each comfort category and based on the comfort level of every individual cell of the analysis grid. The proposed method will allow to analyze a larger number of planning scenarios, comparing conventional full wind direction simulations, to determine optimal or trade-off solutions, thus improving the quality of the built environment.