What is the resolution of the my model created by the Map
A WindSim simulation is dependent on two sources of data to properly describe the terrain and it's influence on the wind conditions, the elevation and the roughness. The elevation describes the shape of the terrain and the roughness describes how easily the air will flow over it.
In our map module we get the elevation and roughness values from the Esri datasets described in Map - Data Sources, of varying resolution for different areas depending on the available source data.
Map:
In the map module the user is selecting an area, specifying the extent of the refinement area (orange box). Then we add a surrounding buffer area of 10 km around the refinement area.
This 25 km by 25 km box is then the area we extract the elevation and roughness for.
The figures (elevation.tif and roughness.png) used to describe the area is 4000x4000 pixels, and it uses linear interpolation for elevation and a fill interpolation for the roughness values to get from the source data to the image.
So for an example case where the refinement area was a 5km by 5km area (25km including buffer zone) the resolution used is 25'000m/4000 ~ 6.25 m for the area.
This should suffice for what we are able to get from the datasets and what our CFD models are able to use.
Conversion to grid.gws file
After the elevation and roughness is extracted we convert the roughness and elevation images to our internal format, a grid.gws file. This is done using the 4000x4000 size so we do not need to incur any interpolation losses.
Model
Then the model is able to use the grid.gws file to create a 3 dimensional grid following the terrain. For this example case, i.e. small area with 10 million cells, it would result in a resolution of 11.2 m.
See also Resolution in Model