London in Dubai: Simulating Climate Change with Autodesk Forma Software's Microclimate Analysis

GIULIA PUSTORINO: Hi, everybody. Thanks for coming here and listen to me. I'm going to speak about how to simulate the climate change with Forma and how to use microclimate analysis to simulate what will happen in our design. Or as in my case, in London and Dubai.

I'm Giulia Pustorino, I am the head of digital of WWT and I have a degree in engineering and architecture. I have been always interested in sustainability and I believe that digital can help to implement the sustainability in everything that we do. I moved to London to have a bigger scenario on an innovative solution and see our big project are led, and I'm incredibly proud to be here today at the Autodesk University to present one software that I really love.

I'm part of a woman in BIM. Women in BIM is an organization that help young women to step up in their career in the digital environment. So I'm here as a representative of Egis. Egis is the fifth engineering group in France and 16 around the world. We have 20,000 employees around all the world and the turnover of 2.06 million, billion sorry.

So we think that the digital transformation is not anymore an option. And the digital all the [INAUDIBLE] and we think that with digital we can improve the way that we approach our design. We are committed to a continuous learning and developing, and we work with in-house tool and we empower our employees with a big range of tools that are available in the market.

As I said, I work for WWP, one of the firm of the architectural line of Egis. You can see in this picture, the green flag are where we have our studio, while the black one represent where we have led project recently. We have various type of project on several sector. We move between masterplanning, retail, residential. But what made our name famous in the world is what we do for the transportation and infrastructure project.

Here you can see a picture of the inauguration of the Elizabeth Line, one of the last underground station in London, where I'm based. When we approach design in WWP, we always try to deliver high quality design. And we do it basing everything that we do in our core value. We are people focused. We place the people at the center of everything that we do.

We are inventive and responsible towards the environment and the people that will live the planet. For this reason, in this moment, we are very concerned about the climate change and the warming temperature. We are experiencing a global raise of temperature of 1.5c. And as you know, two degree is the point of no return. So we believe that the change climate must lead to a change in how we design, and we must empower ourselves with digital tools that help us to understand what will happen.

We are living extreme weather event. And if you look at what is happening in London during the summer, the temperature are raising and a picture like this, it was unbelievable 10 years ago. And the same time in Dubai in one day [? rain ?] the quantity of water that is the same that you need an entire year and the entire country of the Emirates to collect. So we need to prepare ourselves and our design to this situation.

Now I want to compare London and Dubai. I want to understand what will happen if the temperature in London will raise the temperature in Dubai. And the reason why I choose this two city is because London is for most of the year a comfortable place or a cool place where to live. While in Dubai, we have the opposite situation. It's always [? weltering ?] [? out ?] and warm.

So my question for us, for you, for the architect in the room, is how can we build the cities that are more livable, resilient and sustainable in the face of climate change and extreme weather event? So what we can learn from city like Dubai to understand how we can build in extreme hot climate. So one things that we must take into account that is very concerning and important is the effect of the urban heat island. As you know, in the city we have temperatures that are five or 10 degree more high than the rural area. And as architect, we need to take this in account and start to fight it.

Even because this become more and more concerning. If you think that the United Nations say that 68% of the world population is expected to live in urban area by 2050. So we need to act very quickly. 2.5 billion more people will live in the city in the 2050.

So as architects, which are the elements that we can influence to avoid the urban heat island? So the three main elements that we have to consider are geometry, materials, and activities. So we need to take this element and we must design around them. And we must push our client to embrace passive design measure. We need to explain them, how we think that the sustainability must led the design of our building, and it must be at the core of everything.

Today we are in front of a [? leap. ?] We can embrace digital transformation and we can collaboratively work with Autodesk to leverage the technology and democratize sustainability. We are now deciding what will come after BIM. So if you are here, you are probably an architect and you are probably interested in sustainability, and so you are already familiar with the climate curve that explain how the cost of our design increase when we go forward with our design. And the ability and the cost of the performances that decrease.

Autodesk gave us a software that worked in the early phase of the project. It gave us the possibility to test analyze our design when we still have the possibility to do everything that we want with the geometry of this building that we are creating. So as I said before, let's look at Dubai to understand better how we can manage, and what we can do for a city like London.

As you can see, the city, they live in very different climate. Warm and cool, but they are extremely different between themself. And let's see how this influence the way that the temperature are in the city. Forma it's a great software that gives us lots of possibility to work with our geometry and give us an overview of the sustainability of our design in an early stage. And it gives us the ability to quantify and visualize most of the parameters that are part of the operational carbon and the whole life cycle of a building.

But let's see London and Dubai. So as I said, with using Forma, I can analyze, for example, the wind speed. And this will be the output that I can take from this software. Graphics and data that I can use to compare with Dubai, or in your case, maybe with various scenario of the same design that you are representing to your client. And I can use this data to try to understand what is happening in my design or in my city.

So in this case, when I look at the comfort for the wind, I can see how in London the narrow road are air-trap. While in Dubai we have gaps between the building and the air can circulate much better. But why this parameter is important, how they influence the design, we will see in one second.

I want to stop and speak about another aspect. When you have a narrow canyons, your ability to see the sky is very limited. And this is have an impact on our well-being and on the ability of the long wave radiation to dissipate. Which can lead to an [? heat ?] urban island. But let's go back again and look at Forma.

So I run the analysis of the microclimate. Why the microclimate? Because the microclimate, it's a more accurate way to understand how a person feel in this space that I'm designing. Because it's the combination of the fact of sun, daylight and wind. And here in London, I can see that [? moderative ?] stress only for 10% of the space.

So in the end, what we can see is that the microclimate is almost constant across all the geometry that I am analyzing. And the reason why it's constant is because the narrow road doesn't allow the wind to move across the building. And then the temperature stay quite constant across all the geometry.

As I said before, geometry is not the only parameter that I should consider. There are other parameters that I need to consider. But geometry is the one that I can quantify using Forma at the moment. I really hope that Forma will be fully developed and they will increase the possibility to quantify the other elements as well. For example, the materials. Because if I use dark material like asphalt, cement and steel, this material are dark and they capture the heat and release it in the atmosphere very slowly.

And the activities. Our behavior impact the temperature of our city. If we use car and we use cooling system, they all generate and release it in the atmosphere. So we need to be careful on how we act. But stop one second and make the question again. We are doing this presentation because we want to understand how can we build cities that are more livable, resilient and sustainable in the face of climate change and extreme weather event.

As often happen, the answer is in front of our eye and that is, [? it has ?] always been here, is vegetation. The tree perform the photosynthesis. They produce fresh and clean, and they help us to reduce the temperature in our urban space. But can I quantify the importance of having tree in my design?

Yes, I can, using Forma, because as you can see here, if I spot some temperature here and there in my geometry, I have a dropdown of almost 10 degree between a square without any vegetation and the place where I have lots of tree that is a very short distance. I can walk from one place and the other and I will be much more comfortable where the vegitation is. And I tell you this by experience, but now I have the data, thank you to Forma, that help me to communicate it to my client and to explain why I'm doing that.

So which are the key principle that using Forma I think I can highlight to my client. I need to loosen up the fabric. I need to introduce the landscape and water feature. I should think to share the part of the urban environment. And I need to propose a best behavior like public transport to my client.

And when I run the analysis using Forma, I need to think to the day and to the night. Not only day is important. People live during the day and during the night, and they need always to be comfortable. Do you think that they can do that in Forma?

Yes. The answer is yes. I can choose the time and the space where I want to do the analysis. And here I have a very, very reassuring picture. I can see that in July, the hottest month of the year in London, at 8:00 PM. I have no thermal stress. So it will be nice. Walk around and have a nice walk on the Thames looking to the city.

But one of the reasons why I'm here speaking about Forma is because I found that Forma is very quick and easy to learn, and it allowed me to run multiple simulations, even only for doing a presentation at the Autodesk University. So I want to run the analysis of London-- of the geometry of London in Dubai and see what happened.

As you can see from this picture, we have very strong heat stress, for 100% of the time. And the temperature are above 40 degree. It's not sustainable for a person that live in London. So we need to act very quickly and we need to start to use this instrument because we will create the environment of the future.

But my question is, do you think that the passive measure that I presented before will help even in a so extreme scenario? And the answer is yes. Now, I showed you an extreme scenario. I took London and I transported it in Dubai. So I created even a very positive scenario.

I imagined that going out from this room, we will embrace biophilic and all our building will be green. We will have a green facade and green roof everywhere because now we understand the importance of vegetation and we have the instrument to quantify it. And as you can see, I reduce it to the very strong heat, even in Dubai to 73 degree with my [? optimism. ?]

I'm spotting the temperature here and there. We have a drop down of 10 degree in this situation that I think is encouraging. I think it's something that we should do. We have the instrument to create the city that are more resilient and livable, even in extreme hot weather.

Hopefully, we will not go so far. London will not become Dubai. However, there are realistic study that say that London will become like Madrid by 2050. So let's do the analysis again. Yes. Do you remember London before? And look at what we will face if we don't act very quickly. We have a strong heat stress for 2% of the space. Even if I embrace and put greenery everywhere. I think that we need to act and we need to use this instrument to inform what we are doing.

A little disclosure. I have transported the London to Dubai and to Madrid. This is not realistic because the sun, height and angle of London, Dubai and Madrid are different. And this will not change. The temperature will raise. But the position of the sun, no. So my question is, do you think that this is meant in Forma to future proof my design and to analyze the microclimate for the unfortunate event that the temperature will become the same of Madrid.

And the answer is yes. When you run the analysis, the [? freestyle, ?] the [? freestyle ?] that you have is with the average temperature that in July in London is 22 degree. But I can move my cursor and make the analysis for 35 degree. In this way, I will have a realistic picture of what will happen in London in the 2050.

And I leave to you to judge these two pictures and these two data. If we don't act immediately, if we don't embrace digital technology to understand what we are doing, we will face very strong stress for 46% of the space in London. And this will be very much unpleasant.

One things that will not change is the sun, as we said before. And we need to use Forma to understand which are the facades that need most attention in term of shading. As it is for the microclimate, with Forma we can create the geometry and spot the data in the position that we want. And we have the data and the percentage that we can use to speak with our client to compare various scenario of our design.

There are city around the world that are doing a lot in implementing new regulation that are very innovative and improve vegetation to reduce the temperature on the space. But we need to act very quick and we need to act everywhere, because every square meter count. So as architect we have the instrument and we must use it.

Forma is a very new tool. As I said, it's developing every day. And I think we must use it. And we need to encourage industry collaboration and speak Autodesk, to let them understand what is useful for us when we design, and when we speak with our client. Because in this way we will give Autodesk the possibility to shape the software in a way that is useful for us and we can use it to make the planet a better place. Thank you for listening to me.