• Wind and Structures
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.579-611
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• 2017

Bora is a strong, usually dry temporally and spatially transient wind that is common at the eastern Adriatic Coast and many other dynamically similar regions around the world. One of the Bora main characteristics is its gustiness, when wind velocities can reach up to five times the mean velocity. Bora often creates significant problems to traffic, structures and human life in general. In this study, Bora velocity and near-ground turbulence are studied using the results of three-level high-frequency Bora field measurements carried out on a meteorological tower near the city of Split, Croatia. These measurements are analyzed for a period from April 2010 until June 2011. This rather long period allows for making quite robust and reliable conclusions. The focus is on mean Bora velocity, turbulence intensity, Reynolds shear stress and turbulence length scale profiles, as well as on Bora velocity power spectra and thermal stratification. The results are compared with commonly used empirical laws and recommendations provided in the ESDU 85020 wind engineering standard to question its applicability to Bora. The obtained results report some interesting findings. In particular, the empirical power- and logarithmic laws proved to fit mean Bora velocity profiles well. With decreasing Bora velocity there is an increase in the power-law exponent and aerodynamic surface roughness length, and simultaneously a decrease in friction velocity. This indicates an urban-like velocity profile for smaller wind velocities and a rural-like velocity profile for larger wind velocities. Bora proved to be near-neutral thermally stratified. Turbulence intensity and lateral component of turbulence length scales agree well with ESDU 85020 for this particular terrain type. Longitudinal and vertical turbulence length scales, Reynolds shear stress and velocity power spectra differ considerably from ESDU 85020. This may have significant implications on calculations of Bora wind loads on structures.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• v.2
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• pp.964-968
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• 2006

Bora events over the Adriatic Sea and Black Sea are investigated by using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images acquired by the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) onboard the European Envisat satellite. These images show pronounced elongated patterns of increased sea surface roughness caused by bora winds. The comparison of the SAR images with wind fields derived from Quikscat data confirms that in all cases a strong northeasterly wind was blowing from the mountains onto the sea. It is shown that the SAR images reveal details of the spatial extent of the bora wind fields over the sea which cannot be obtained by other instruments. Furtheremore, also quantitative information on the wind field is extracted from the SAR images by using a wind scatterometer model.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.505-522
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• 2014

While effects of the atmospheric boundary layer flow on engineering infrastructure are more or less known, some local transient winds create difficulties for structures, traffic and human activities. Hence, further research is required to fully elucidate flow characteristics of some of those very unique local winds. In this study, important characteristics of observed vertical velocity profiles along the main wind direction for the gusty Bora wind blowing along the eastern Adriatic coast are presented. Commonly used empirical power-law and the logarithmic-law profiles are compared against unique 3-level high-frequency Bora measurements. The experimental data agree well with the power-law and logarithmic-law approximations. An interesting feature observed is a decrease in the power-law exponent and aerodynamic surface roughness length, and an increase in friction velocity with increasing Bora wind velocity. This indicates an urban-like velocity profile for smaller wind velocities and rural-like velocity profile for larger wind velocities, which is due to a stronger increase in absolute velocity at each of the heights observed as compared to the respective velocity gradient (difference in average velocity among two different heights). The trends observed are similar during both the day and night. The thermal stratification is near neutral due to a strong mechanical mixing. The differences in aerodynamic surface roughness length are negligible for different time averaging periods when using the median. For the friction velocity, the arithmetic mean proved to be independent of the time record length, while for the power-law exponent both the arithmetic mean and the median are not influenced by the time averaging period. Another issue is a large difference in aerodynamic surface roughness length when calculating using the arithmetic mean and the median. This indicates that the more robust median is a more suitable parameter to determine the aerodynamic surface roughness length than the arithmetic mean value. Variations in velocity profiles at the same site during different wind periods are interesting because, in the engineering community, it has been commonly accepted that the aerodynamic characteristics at a particular site remain the same during various wind regimes.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.5_1
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• pp.903-916
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• 2021

An area's topography refers to the shape of the earth's surface, described by its elevation, slope, and aspect, among other features. The topographical conditions determine energy flowsthat move water and energy from higher to lower elevations, such as how much solar energy will be received and how much wind or rain will affect it. Another common factor, the topographic wetness index (TWI), is a calculation in digital elevation models of the tendency to accumulate water per slope and unit area, and is one of the most widely referenced hydrologic topographic factors, which helps explain the location of forest vegetation. Analyses of topographical factors can be calculated using a geographic information system (GIS) program based on digital elevation model (DEM) data. Recently, a large number of free open source software (FOSS) GIS programs are available and developed for researchers, industries, and governments. FOSS GIS programs provide opportunitiesfor flexible algorithms customized forspecific user needs. The majority of biodiversity in island areas exists at about 20% higher elevations than in land ecosystems, playing an important role in ecological processes and therefore of high ecological value. However, island areas are vulnerable to disturbances and damage, such as through climate change, environmental pollution, development, and human intervention, and lacks systematic investigation due to geographical limitations (e.g. remoteness; difficulty to access). More than 4,000 of Korea's islands are within a few hours of its coast, and 88% are uninhabited, with 52% of them forested. The forest ecosystems of islands have fewer encounters with human interaction than on land, and therefore most of the topographical conditions are formed naturally and affected more directly by weather conditions or the environment. Therefore, the analysis of forest topography in island areas can be done more precisely than on its land counterparts, and therefore has become a major focus of attention in Korea. This study is focused on calculating the performance of different topographical factors using FOSS GIS programs. The test area is the island forests in Korea's south and the DEM of the target area was processed with GRASS GIS and SAGA GIS. The final slopes and TWI maps were produced as comparisons of the differences between topographic factor calculations of each respective FOSS GIS program. Finally, the merits of each FOSS GIS program used to calculate the topographic factors is discussed.