AI for Urban Microclimate Engineering
Liangzhu Leon Wang
Concordia University
Thursday, 13 November 2025 | 10:00-11:00 (PDT)
https://ubc.zoom.us/j/62915077822?pwd=FP7JOIfASK0G48b2vvfAI13aMW25wr.1
Abstract:
Urban Microclimate Engineering integrates science-informed design, modeling, and optimization of morphology, materials, vegetation, and infrastructure to actively shape temperature, humidity, wind, and radiation across indoor–outdoor domains. This seminar synthesizes evidence on how microclimate affects energy use, thermal comfort, health, and infrastructure reliability, and reviews AI advances that map urban form to microclimate while identifying needs in data curation, cross-city generalization, and interpretability for design. Anchored by the pan-Canadian initiative “Transforming Built and Urban Microclimates,” I will highlight urban aerodynamics, climate-extreme risk, and actionable metrics that connect microclimate control to electrification and carbon reduction. A few AI thrusts move from diagnosis to design: a Fourier Neural Operator framework delivering real-time 3D simulation, AI-accelerated and generalizable CFD simulations that preserve governing physics; an open morphology-indicator dataset for rigorous benchmarking; location-conditioned wind-field encoders for reconstruction from sparse sensing; and diffusion and conditional-flow-matching generative models to generate instantaneous urban wind fields for warm start for CFD acceleration.
About the speaker:
Dr. Liangzhu (Leon) Wang is Professor of Building Engineering at Concordia University, Montreal, and Associate Director of the Centre for Zero Energy Building Studies. His work spans resilient, healthy, and sustainable urban microclimates, UBEM, aerodynamics, and building simulation, with over 300 publications and contributions to standards and codes. He is a Fellow of IBPSA and ASHRAE and was named International Research Communicator of the Year. Wang has led $16M+ in research funding (≈one-third from industry) and leads the CFREF projects (SEED, IMPACT) under Concordia University’s $123M “Electrifying Society: Towards Decarbonized Resilient Communities” Volt-Age program (2023–2030). Editorially, he serves as Associate Editor & Special Issue Editor for Energy and Buildings, Editor of Building Simulation, Associate Editor of Science and Technology for the Built Environment, and Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics and Building and Environment.