A Study on the Effects of the Anthropogenic Heat Fluxes on the Temperature Distribution in an Urban Area

In this study, we investigated the effects of the anthropogenic heat caused by the energy usage on the air temperature distributions in an urban area using a CFD model. We calculated the anthropogenic heat fluxes using a top-down method with monthly and hourly allocation coefficients and the total amount of the yearly electrical energy usage of buildings. To construct the buildings and to estimate the anthropogenic heat fluxes in the CFD model for the target area, we used the land use and GIS data. We conducted the CFD simulations for the heatwave period (2018.08.02 ~ 2018.08.08) in a building-congested district around the Seoul ASOS (ASOS 108) to see how the anthropogenic heat fluxes affected the thermal environment in the target area. The target area is mostly composed of commercial and residential areas. The temperature increased near the roads and buildings. At the night time, the temperature increase near the buildings with high anthropogenic heat fluxes was more significant than the daytime. The comparison with the ASOS-observed temperatures showed that the inclusion of the anthropogenic heat fluxes improved the CFD simulations of temperatures.