An Outdoor-Indoor Coupled Simulation Framework for Climate Change Conscious Urban Neighbourhood Design

Only recently, research communities and professional organizations have started to incorporate the factor of climate change in software-based environmental simulation to inform climate adaptation planning and design. Based on the results from simulating a neighbourhood design proposed for New Cairo, Egypt, we propose a conceptual framework and an environmental simulation work-flow for Climate Change Conscious Urban Neighbourhood Design (C3UND). Central to the C3UND approach is the coupling of neighbourhood outdoor simulation and building indoor simulation where there is a greater interaction between indoor and outdoor environments, C3UND takes into account climate change scenarios as projected by today's meteorological modelling. Using ENVI-met for urban neighbourhood outdoor simulation and Ecotect for building indoor simulation, we demonstrate how a work-flow can be implemented to play out climate change scenarios on urban neighbourhoods and the buildings located within. The simulation framework and work-flow was further applied to a neighbourhood site at the Sheffield University campus with weather data input of present-day (2012) and of 2050 generated by the CCWeatherGen tool. This study suggests that environmental simulation of climate change scenarios at an urban neighbourhood scale is currently achievable but not without considerable gaps. Use of additional 3D virtual neighbourhood models is required to bring outdoor and indoor simulation outcomes together to enable more holistic understanding of potential climate change impacts. The implications of the C3UND framework for sustainable urban and building design and areas for further research are discussed.