STEVE Tool Plug-in for SketchUp: A User-Friendly Microclimatic Mapping Tool for Estate Development

Due to increasing urbanization and heat island issues, current cities need to sensibly plan their future developments to preserve the quality of their urban environment. An urban climatic map (UCmap) method can be utilized for this purpose to examine the effectiveness of various urban environmental solutions in improving environmental conditions, particularly in terms of outdoor temperature and human thermal comfort. The available climatic models for both temperature and thermal comfort mapping can be deemed complicated and less user friendly; particularly for practitioners such as urban planners. Hence, the Screening Tool for Estate Environment Evaluation (STEVE Tool) and Thermal Sensation Vote (TSV) models were developed with a motivation to link research findings with urban planners. This paper showcases the models which have been developed as a plug-in for Trimble SketchUp (formerly Google SketchUp and hereinafter simply SketchUp); serving as a straightforward analysis tool for urban planners during the design and feasibility study processes. This plug-in can generate various climatic maps and sectional temperature profiles. Furthermore, it is also equipped with a plants database from the National Parks Board (NParks) and thus is able to calculate the impact of landscaping on temperature and carbon sequestration accordingly. A case study has been provided, using a central business district (CBD) area in Singapore. In the end, the generated UCMaps are able to provide microclimate information for an existing masterplan or urban morphology layout, so that planners or architects can identify the hot spots or problematic areas and then solutions or mitigation strategies can be developed afterwards by analysing the UCMaps.