Zeyu's Notes

[zeyujiang8800]

Weekly Notebook Entry — Week [1]

Overview

• Week Span: [1/14/24] to [1/20/24]

Tasks for This Week

List your specific objectives for this week, including learning targets and project milestones.

• [x] Task 1: Intro to Surrogate Modeling
• [x] Task 2: Understand VIP class format/syllabus

Tasks

Task: [Intro to Surrogate Modeling ] - (completed)

• Description: Global warming is on the rise Urbanization: 1.9 billion people increase in population A priori preference articulation Run simulation, to get solution Design development - we’ve decided everything

• Outcome & Reflection: There's a ton of room for development in urban planning, and with the current technologies, it's ridiculously time consuming.

Task: [Understand VIP Class Format/Syllabus] - (Completed)

Team oriented class/research, peer review and notes are the main grades

General Takeaway, Skills & Knowledge Acquired

• Note Taking is a big part of the grade
• Each team member needs to do a peer review

Team Meetings

• Meeting Highlights: Intro to this VIP, getting background on surrogate modeling. Rhino3D, Eddy3D, Microclimates, Mobility

Plans for Next Week

• [x] Next Week's Task 1: Figure out what team you want to be a part of and what you want to research. Particularly, something related with modeling and data analytics

[zeyujiang8800]

Weekly Notebook Entry — Week [2]

Overview

• Week Span: [1/21/24] to [1/27/24]

Tasks for This Week

• [x] Task 1: Meet with teammates

Tasks

Task: [Meet with teammates] - (completed)

• Description: Met with teammates this week. Recap week 1 information, planning to see what team/project we're interested in doing.

• Outcome & Reflection: Fill out the google form and wait for results next week.

Plans for Next Week

• [x] Next Week's Task 1: Find out about what team everyone gets placed into.

[zeyujiang8800]

Weekly Notebook Entry — Week [3]

Overview

• Week Span: [1/28/24] to [2/3/24]

Tasks for This Week

• [x] Task 1: Meet with subteam

Tasks

Task: [Meet with Subteam] - (completed)

• Description: Teams have now officially been chosen, and we will now start focusing on our subteam project, which my case is Microclimates.
• Outcome & Reflection:
• Figure out what we want to do with microclimates. Previously, microclimates modeling has been solved for building and neighborhood scale issues. I hope to expand it to city and country scale.

Challenges & Solutions

• Possibly exploring Vegetation for our model parameter Open source, dynamic, quick, and user-friendly ​ Research GAP: A tool that enables the user to simulate urban microclimate taking into consideration UTCI, MRT, PMV, and UHI. Inclusion of high levels of detail (parameters mentioned) and expand beyond neighborhood and building predictions. Some balance between performance and expense

General Takeaway, Skills & Knowledge Acquired

• Reseach skills, article reading, brainstorming.

Plans for Next Week

• [x] Next Week's Task 1: Discuss our findings

[zeyujiang8800]

Weekly Notebook Entry — Week [4]

Overview

• Week Span: [2/4/24] to [2/10/24]

Tasks for This Week

• [x] Task 1: Present Findings

Tasks

Task: [Present Findings] - (completed)

• Description: We've decided to try out the Urban weather generator (UWG), a program developed by researchers at MIT that is able to simulate weather conditions and temperature of a location with given parameters.

• Link to Work: https://urbanmicroclimate.scripts.mit.edu/uwg.php

• Outcome & Reflection: Figure out what it takes in as input and what it outputs. Is the model reliable? What are possible uses for our current focus for vegetation?

General Takeaway, Skills & Knowledge Acquired

• Researching, Python

Team Meetings

• Meeting Highlights:

Personal Reflection

• Planning for different approaches to our project Look into UWG by MIT Vertical diffusion model, Rural station model , Urban boundary layer model, Urban canopy and building energy What are the inputs and outputs of these? Fast and spatialized - urban weather generator Openfoam - time consuming Figure out some sort of model that can later be implemented into the software It can be derived from a previous model Energy demand in the midtown buildings What happens in between those buildings? UWG used before for neighborhood and building scale Output? Maybe temperatures

Visual Documentation (optional)

Plans for Next Week

• [x] Next Week's Task 1: Present work on UWG

[zeyujiang8800]

Weekly Notebook Entry — Week [5]

Overview

• Week Span: [2/11/24] to [2/17/24]

Tasks for This Week

• [x] Task 1: Present work on UWG

Tasks

Task: [Task Name] - (completed)

• Description: Managed to run the UWG in VSCode, showcased to teams what we've been working on.
• Outcome & Reflection: The UWG takes in an EPW file and spits out a simulated weather of an urban area with the changed parameters.

General Takeaway, Skills & Knowledge Acquired

• Programming, Debugging, Testing

Team Meetings

• Meeting Highlights: Can we take the time series and modify it to provide more metrics related to microclimates spatially We have sensors around campus that captured the data of the temperature, humidity etc We can compare the model for the different cities with the actual data, to see if it actually matches up Figure out how we can get the data of the vegetation: can’t do google maps and can't just go around and count them one by one Urban weather generator code open source Different types What's the input and output?

Visual Documentation (optional)

Plans for Next Week

• [x] Next Week's Task 1: Learn more about the UWG and ways we can implement our model

[zeyujiang8800]

Weekly Notebook Entry — Week [6]

Overview

• Week Span: [2/18/24] to [2/24/24]

Tasks for This Week

• [x] Task 1: Figuring out the next step

Tasks

Task: [Figuring out the next step] - (completed)

• Description: We now have UWG up and working, now we want to know where we will be heading. We still don't know exactly all of the parameters we can plug in to the UWG.

Prof. Kastner shared with us the temperature data collected on GT campus from another professor's research. We could potentially explore our model.

-

Team Meetings

• Meeting Highlights: Showed teammates how to set up simulation in python Brainstormed ideas for getting data We definitely still want to focus on vegetation Next Steps: Get the building data from Silvia, including Lidar Data Brainstorm parameters (inputs) for modeling Building Reference, Building Size with respect to some other variables

Plans for Next Week

• [x] Next Week's Task 1: Look into ways to get EPW data for campus measurements

[zeyujiang8800]

Weekly Notebook Entry — Week [7]

Overview

• Week Span: [2/18/24] to [2/24/24]

Tasks for This Week

• [x] Task 1: Debug Code

Tasks

Task: [Debug Code] - (completed)

• Description: We've received the EPW file for GT campus. However, I ran into an issue with the UWG where it's unable to generate outputs for our data. It has worked for previous files, all except for ours, which is prompting me to look into retrieving the data again, but through another means.

Challenges & Solutions

Team Meetings

• Meeting Highlights: We now know all the inputs for the UWG, and vegetation has 4 kinds: latent fraction of trees [treeLatent] advanced setting definition characterizes the amount of latent heat given off by trees. Affects the moisture balance in the urban area

unit [--]; ranges between 0 and 1

typical values 0.7

latent fraction of grass [grassLatent] advanced setting definition characterizes the amount of latent heat given off by grass. Affects the moisture balance in the urban area

unit [--]; ranges between 0 and 1

typical values 0.6

albedo of vegetation [vegAlbedo] advanced setting definition Ratio of reflected radiation from the vegetation surfaces to incident radiation upon them

unit [--]; ranges between 0 and 1

typical values 0.25

vegetation participation begin month [vegStart] advanced setting definition beginning month for vegetation

unit month

typical values 1 - 12

vegetation participation end month [vegEnd] advanced setting definition end month of vegetation

unit month

typical values 1- 12

Personal Reflection

• Figure out ways to debug the error, look into NREL API again for data retrieval

Plans for Next Week

• [x] Next Week's Task 1: Hopefully have the program fixed so we can start analyzing the results of the UWG vs the actual data.