Development of a system for predicting snow distribution in built-up environments: Combining a mesoscale meteorological model and a CFD model

A system has been developed for predicting snow distribution in built-up environments. This system combines a mesoscale meteorological model that predicts precipitation, including snowfall in an area, and a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model that predicts snow phenomena on building scale. The system focuses on snow distribution around buildings, which often leads to snow disaster and snow-related difficulties in urban areas. It can be used for predicting snow distribution due to snowfall and snowdrift in a development area and is expected to be a useful design tool for city and architectural planning in snowy regions. This paper outlines the system and examines its performance by comparing its results with measured data. The snowdrift patterns, i.e. erosion around the upwind corners and deposition in front of and behind a building, obtained by the present model show good correspondence with those obtained from field observation. However, the model under-predicted the decrease of snow depth near the building. Further investigations required to comprehensively evaluate the prediction accuracy of the system are discussed.