Although there are many research teams and software-companies which work in the area of chemicals dispersion in urban terrain, the majority of them deals only with street canyons and industrial pollution, considering the city as an area with high roughness.

Current research in the Laboratory conecentrates in the development of a finite-elements dispersion model, capable of dealing with releases created in cities, whose full topography complexity will be taken into consideration. Results will be validated in vitro, aiming to produce a user-friendly graphical package.

Assael M.J., and Kakosimos K., “Finite Element Simulation of Toxic Gas Dispersion in Urban Terrain: Preliminary Results”, WIT Trans.: Ecol. and Environm., 82:379-387 (2005)

A new, efficient 3D mesh-generation algorithm, HeMUT (Hexahedral Mesh for Urban Terrains), has been developed under Visual Basic .NET. HeMUT builds unstructured/structured hexahedral meshes. The algorithm focuses on urban terrains and on the mesh generation for the simulation of toxic gases dispersion (finite-element computations). HeMUT is fully automated, multi-threading and takes advantage of terrain. In addition, it distributes the nodes on the domain by employing a method based on process design considerations. These features decrease the computational effort and at the same time differentiate this algorithm from all other similar ones. In comparison with commercial softwares, HeMUT performed well.

Assael M.J., and Kakosimos K., “A New 3D-Mesh Generator Based on Geometry Decomposition for Use in Urban-Terrain Simulations." Computers & Structures  87:28-38 (2009).