Evaluation of parametric laws for computing the wind speed profile in the urban boundary layer. Comparison to two-dimensional building water channel data

The wind flow in urban canopies depends mostly on the geometry of the roughness elements present above the surface. Given the impracticality of obtaining relationships strictly related to the governing equations, the wind-speed profile is evaluated in current practice by means of similarity laws, whose parameters are usually based on the morphometric method. This study analyses some of the empirical laws found in the literature adopted to determine the wind-speed profile above the canopy layer in neutral conditions. Their performance is tested against water-channel data simulating an idealised two-dimensional array of regular buildings of constant height.