About the webinar
Urban climate has become a planning factor in Swiss cities. Cantons now publish high-resolution climate maps: the Canton of Zurich released maps at 5 x 5 m resolution in June 2025. Since December 1, 2024, Zurich's revised Planning and Building Act also lets municipalities set binding rules on greening, ventilation, and heat mitigation, for example in design plans.
For your projects, this means more development sites need a microclimate study that matches cantonal parameters. Most studies assess daytime heat stress and nighttime cooling at set points in time, and many compare the current and planned state of a site. You need reliable model input, sound meteorological data, and results that authorities and clients can read.
Dr. Andreas Wicki has used ENVI-met since 2014 and now runs urban climate studies for Swiss development projects at GEO Partner AG. In this session, he shows how his team investigates larger projects, which methods hold up, and where projects go wrong. The approaches apply to cities well beyond Switzerland.
What you'll learn
In this session, you’ll learn:
- Where ENVI-met fits in climate-responsive planning, and what cantonal authorities expect from a study
- How to convert GIS data and architectural plans into ENVI-met model input, and where the main challenges lie
- What a microclimate workflow looks like within a development project, from brief to final report
- Which pitfalls, mistakes, and misunderstandings to avoid when you apply the model
- How to use meteorological data to improve your simulations and set consistent standards
- How to make your results accessible and readable for authorities, clients, and nonspecialists
- How GEO Partner has applied ENVI-met in case studies across Switzerland
- Live Q&A: put your own project questions to Andreas Wicki
Who should attend
- Sustainability consultants and environmental specialists
- Urban planners and city development professionals
- Architects and landscape architects
- Engineers and multidisciplinary design teams
- Public authorities and policymakers
- Researchers and practitioners working on climate adaptation and urban resilience
You don't need prior ENVI-met experience. Experienced users will get practical detail on workflows and data choices.