ABSTRACT
The British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has suggested that we have an ethical duty to ‘visualize the future impact of all actions (undertaken or not undertaken)’. Modelling a proposed built environment project has the potential to contribute to this obligation and we might expect such means to be a normal part of responsible design decision-making. Urban climate models, both physical and mathematical, may be used to investigate urban climate factors at different scales in order to investigate the likely consequences of design proposals. This chapter provides an overview of some of the main modelling methods used in urban climatology, and illustrates potential applications of such tools in a number of detailed case studies.
