@lguilhermers, sorry for the late response.
Here’s some initial anwers:
1 - As I understood, some of the inputs required by UWG are made as constant and not possible to change in DF, supposedly because they are not as straightforward as the current parameters. According to Nakano’s thesis some of the parameters ( e.g. night setpoint end time, maximum discritization lenght for UBL model and minimum wind velocity ) are significant, but those parameters are not shown or editable in DF. Is there any way to see what values are being used for those and perhaps edit them?
2 - The “DF CIty from Parameters” is quite useful for generic studies, but there are several parameters that I couldn’t edit when compared to the “DF City” component ( e.g. floor height, fraction of waste into canyon, roof vegetation ). Many of those are also considered significant according to Nakano’s studies. Is there any way to incorporate those parameters using the “City from Parameters” option?
For this level of customization, I would recommend you go directly to the python code itself, rather then rely on Grasshopper. No matter how much we expose parameters in the the GH components, the python code will always be the ultimate source of truth and give you the most flexibility. The good news is that thanks to @AntoineDao, the latest version of the UWG is now available as a package on PyPI. So if you know python (or are willing to learn) you can install it with: pip install uwg, and then test everything you want.
3 - In UWG, the building systems are very detailed, including materials (U-Value), infiltration, internal gains and chiller COP . In DF, I believe those parameters are carried by the “Building Program” and “Building Age”. Some of the building parameters, such as glazing ratio and albedo can be edited with the “DF Edit Typology Envelope”, but others, like the ones I cited above I could not change. Is there any way to see/ edit those parameters via grasshopper, as some of those are quite interesting to study and can have a significant impact on UHI?
@chris can speak more to this. Not sure about the timing and specific inputs but last we discussed the plan was to expose more building parameters.
4 - How does the tool differentiate between grass and trees in its calculations? Are the vegetation parameters component related to both, or one of them specifically?
Good question. I’ll have to get back to you on this, as as I recall it’s done in a somewhat counter-intuitive way.
In the meantime, if you want to have a better idea of the model components, I would advise checking out the UWG’s original author’s work on the model: Study and prediction of the energy interactions between buildings and the urban climate .
5 - Since UWG runs a building energy model for its calculation in a iterative way, is it possible to extract the results for estimated energy consumption of buildings in UWG or that requires to run a separate model using the urban weather (output from UWG)?
Yes, this one is on my todo list. The original tool outputs a heat balance of not only the building energy, but also the energy in the canyon, and therefore is something really useful to have. That being said, @chris is working on a method to obtain city energy results, that will be much more accurate then what the UWG provides, so I recommend using that when it’s available for city energy purposes.
-S