Overview - Mitigation Impact Screening Tool (MIST)
The Mitigation Impact Screening Tool (MIST) is intended to
provide qualitatively accurate assessments of the likely impacts of heat island
mitigation strategies averaged at the city-scale. All results presented in this
tool were obtained using state-of-the-science modeling tools. Nevertheless, the
required assumptions and approximations dictate that the results presented by
MIST are qualitative in nature.
The mitigation strategies investigated include increasing
urban albedo and/or increasing urban vegetative cover. MIST also allows
investigation of average temperature reduction and produces estimates of the
resulting impacts on ozone and energy consumption. The user may enter both
positive or negative values to represent the desired level of change in albedo,
vegetation, or temperature.
There are three basic steps involved in running MIST
1. Select
the city to model
2. Define the mitigation strategy to test
3. Estimate the impacts on meteorology, air quality, and
energy
It should be emphasized that this tool is intended for screening
purposes only. The research upon which it is based necessarily incorporates a
number of assumptions and MIST makes further assumptions and
interpolation/extrapolation to make the results widely applicable for a
large number of cities and a wide range of mitigation strategies.
Follow the links on the left under Help for detailed explanations of
each step at any time. To return to the Screening Tool at any time,
follow the Screening Tool link at the upper left, or click your
browser's Back button.
To begin using the Screening Tool, click the
link below:
Advanced users
seeking more detailed information on this and other topics related to the scientific and
modeling underpinnings of the MIST software tool should read the
detailed model description document that can be downloaded from the
MIST website under Resources - Detailed Help Document (PDF).
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