Simulating urban obstructions

Abstract

A problem that urban planners have to deal with is the obstruction of sunlight by buildings which may shade streets adjacent to them as well as other near by buildings, thus strongly affecting (1) the need for summer cooling and winter heating at particular sites, and (2) the suitability of sites for particular uses. This problem becomes very complicated when buildings are irregularly shaped and are located in an irregular pattern, and when street widths vary. Doing the necessary calculations by hand is extremely tedious, highly error-prone, and costly. A generalized computer model of great flexibility has been developed to overcome the drawbacks of hand caZ culations of solar shadowing. The program, which is called OBSTRUCT, is modular and is written in FORTRAN IV to run on an IBM 3033 computer. The pro gram is available at no charge. Sample runs for two illustrative cases are included in this report.