Section: Application Domains

Urban environment

The urban environment is essentially studied for air and noise pollutions. Air pollution levels and noise pollution levels vary a lot from one street to next. The simulations are therefore carried out at street resolution and take into account the city geometry. The associated numerical models are subject to large uncertainties. Their input parameters, e.g. pollution emissions from road traffic, are also uncertain. Quantifying the simulation uncertainties is challenging because of the high computational costs of the numerical models. An appealing approach in this context is the use of metamodels, from which ensembles of simulations can be generated for uncertainty quantification.

The simulation uncertainties can be reduced by the assimilation of fixed and mobile sensors. High-quality fixed monitoring sensors are deployed in cities, and an increasing number of mobile sensors are added to the observational networks. Even smartphones can be used as noise sensors and dramatically increase the spatial coverage of the observations. The processing and assimilation of the observations raises many questions regarding the quality of the measurements and the design of the network of sensors.