An alternative wind profile formulation for urban areas in neutral conditions

On the basis of meteorological observations conducted within the city of Rome, Italy, a new formulation of the wind-speed profile valid in urban areas and neutral conditions is developed. It is found that the role played by the roughness length in the canonical log-law profile can be taken by a local length scale, depending on both the surface cover and the distance above the ground surface, which follows a pattern of exponential decrease with height. The results show that the proposed model leads to increased performance compared with that obtained by using other approaches found in the literature.