High-Resolution Urban Wind Risk Assessment for Emergency Management Using UAV–CFD Integrated Modeling

Coastal cities exposed to extreme wind events are facing increasing challenges in emergency management under climate change. Accurate and high-resolution wind environment information over complex urban terrain is essential for disaster risk assessment and evidence-based emergency planning; however, such information is often unavailable in conventional management practices. This study proposes an integrated UAV–CFD framework to support urban wind risk assessment by combining multi-source geospatial data and high-resolution numerical simulation. A refined urban terrain model with a spatial resolution of 0.5 m was constructed through the fusion of Google Earth data and UAV oblique photogrammetry, and subsequently coupled with a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model to analyze the urban wind environment. Field measurements obtained from a 50 m wind observation tower were used to validate the simulation results. The results reveal significant wind speed amplification caused by complex terrain and building configurations, with a maximum amplification factor of 1.95 due to the canyon effect. The relative errors between simulated and measured wind speeds and turbulence intensity were generally within 15%, demonstrating the reliability of the proposed framework. By providing high-resolution and spatially explicit wind risk information, this study offers practical decision-support for emergency management, urban planning, and resilience-oriented disaster mitigation in coastal cities.