Drone-assisted infrared thermography for calibration of outdoor microclimate simulation models

To overcome these issues, the present paper proposes a novel method to indirectly improve its estimate based on the use of infrared thermal pictures gathered by drone flights to measure surface temperatures, and then use these values for calibrating numerical models. This novel approach has been demonstrated for a 400 × 400 m2 wide area in the city of Medicina (Italy) and showed a good agreement with ENVI-met simulations, with average and standard deviation values difference between measured and simulated surface temperatures of 1.53 °C and 2.22 °C respectively. The highest differences (up to 19 °C) are found for areas densely covered by vegetation. Further studies are planned to evaluate the goodness of the calibration pixel wise and to propose calibration thresholds based on Tmrt sensitivity.