A multi-model, multi-site benchmarking evaluation project for urban areas

An international community-based effort.

Previous urban surface model evaluation projects have assessed how model complexity affects performance at two urban sites (Grimmond et al., 2010, 2011), and how coupled surface-atmosphere simulations differ from offline simulations (Steeneveld et al., 2017). In non-urban landscapes, the PLUMBER project introduced a framework for benchmarking models across many sites (Best et al., 2015). 

Building on these methods, Urban-PLUMBER will ask:

• How have the last decade of model development affected performance?
• Where do different modelling approaches excel across the urbanised/vegetated continuum?
• How does more detailed morphology information affect model performance? 
• Are models utilising available meteorological information effectively?