PAST

Development Of Quantitative Urban Environment Simulation Tool (QUEST)

2015-2018
Funding Agency: NRF
Summary: In this project we collaborated with IHPC and NTU and developed the Quantitative Urban Environment Simulation Tool (QUEST) to assess the combined impacts of the urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon and rising global temperatures due to climate change on thermal comfort, so that planners, architects and engineers can use it to incorporate appropriate UHI mitigation measures upfront in the urban planning and design process. NUS team specifically developed an integrated outdoor thermal comfort index or OTCI for Singapore. This validated index predicts the level of thermal comfort experienced by a typical Singaporean when exposed to different outdoor environmental conditions in Singapore. The index, which looks at multi-variables of weather (outdoor temperature, humidity, wind, and radiant heat) and experience or thermal sensation from the surveyed people, provides an acceptable range of thermal comfort levels for most Singaporeans.

2014-2017
Fundy Agency: NEA
Summary: Department of Building, NUS, recently has completed the Climate Change Vulnerability Study (V Study), phase 2, named as: Impact on urban temperature profile and energy consumption (UTPEC) of buildings. The study produces a large amount of data, including temperature maps, thermal comfort (TSV) maps. Moving forward from the above-mentioned study, the Government has shown the interest to replicate the methodology in generating temperature and TSV maps to other locations in Singapore. These maps will form part of the "Impact - Spatial" data sets in the Climate Change Information Service (CLICIS). The objectives of this part of the study are
- To conduct urban climate field measurement in order to calibrate and/or validate the wind simulation study (conducted by IHPC).
- To generate temperature map and thermal comfort (TSV) map for specified urban area in Singapore (in this case, Jurong Lake District) based on the same time frames as in the UTPEC study.

2011 - 2014
Funding Agency: JTC Corporation
Summary: Working on the limitations from the previous joint research project between National University of Singapore (NUS) and JTC Corporation on climatic mapping of business park for environmental quality assessment, this research project looks into several parameters to further develop the air temperature prediction models such as the influence of water bodies, canyon orientations and possible incorporation of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) results into the Screening Tool for Estate Environment Evaluation (STEVE) platform. Field measurement data from one-north Business Park, International Business Park, Loyang Industrial Estate, Woodlands Industrial Park, Kallang, Marina Bay Promenade and Promontory, Gardens by the Bay, Shenton Way, Tanjong Pagar, Tampines, and Bedok were used in the analysis. The main objectives achieved in this research project are as follows:
- To enhance STEVE Tool version 2 to be able to predict ambient temperature in all JTC developments.
- To develop STEVE Tool version 2 to be able to calculate carbon storage and sequestration of trees.
- To develop STEVE Tool version 2 to be able to optimize proposed building / urban designs by users and propose alternative designs based on pre-set objectives and to estimate cost implications.

2009 - 2012
Funding Agency: MND/URA
Summary: Singapore is in the process of rapid development. Without a careful urban planning, rising of urban air temperature is expected to occur and affects human thermal stress. Therefore, climatic information has to be considered in the urban planning process. The project comprises 2 main approaches: Island-wide and Marina Bay climatic study. The objectives of the island-wide climatic mapping are to provide an overview on urban climate of Singapore and to strategically consider the climatic and air ventilation which allows pro-active planning decisions and policies to be made at the city scale. The study focuses on UC (Urban Climatic) Maps analysis and the follow up recommendations. The objective of the Marina Bay climatic mapping is to provide climatic analysis (outdoor temperature, wind flow, and outdoor thermal comfort) as input in urban planning and design, particularly in Marina Bay area.