The overall objective of the Action was to evaluate and quantify wind effects in dense urban areas with a European wind climate with a view to improving the quality of the urban environment and mitigating windstorm impacts and reducing wind induced failure. The first theme was the study of the urban wind climate itself, which involved developing an understanding of how wind speeds and turbulence characteristics vary with different urban forms. The second theme was the effect of wind on people (pedestrians, building ventilation, effects on transport). The third theme was the role of wind in transport of gases and particles in the urban atmosphere (pollutants, rain, snow). The final theme mainly considered a number of fundamental problems related to building behaviour in high winds. The main task was to carry out an audit of wind effects in the urban environment, based on the above mentioned four themes. Recommendations emerging from this task were specified in specific techniques, used for study of each of these themes, particularly for modelling and testing methods. These techniques were entitled “CFD techniques”, “Large scale facilities and full scale measurement” and “Analytical and numerical techniques”. The C14 findings were disseminated on various occasions: * AWAS ’02 (Advances in Wind and Structures, Pusan, Korea, August 2002); EURODYN’02 (5th European Conference on Structural Dynamics, Munich, Sept. 2002); * C14 members were invited to organise an own session at the 11th International Conference on Wind Engineering (June 2003, Lubbock, Texas, U.S.A.), the world most prestigious conference on the wind engineering. The Action C14 was finalised by its Final Conference, held in May 2004, in cooperation with the Von Karmann Institute (research establishment of NATO) in Brussels. One of the most significant achievements was the launch of the European-African co-operation frame, which consists of C14 experts. This activity is supported by the EU Sustainable Energy and several national research programmes, aiding the development countries. Certain C14 results were implemented to the PERBRISK FP6 project.
