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ENVI-met Output Files
Each ENVI-met simulation creates a huge amount of data which is organized in different files and folders. In general, there are two different types of output files regardless their content:
- Simple Text Files: Files which contain data in pure ASCII text format. Usually, the content of the file are described in the first row of the file. These file can be read and visiualized with any software that can read text files (which should be about every piece of software that can visiualize data).
- Binary Files (EDX/EDT): The main ENVI-met output files are stored in a binary format and require special software to be read. The LEONARDO software included in the ENVI-met system offers a comfortable and visual access to all data and give various options for 2D and 3D visualisation. In addition, with the help of the reference for the EDX/EDT file format, own reader routines can easily be developed. Moreover, ENVI-met provides the option to convert EDX/EDT data to the NetCDF format via the NetCDF application found in the Headquarter.
In order to use advanced analysis functions like Time Series in LEONARDO, it is strongly recommended to store only one simulation run in the same folder and not to mix different model runs.
Name and storage logic
The huge amount of data generated by each simulation requires a strict concept of storage and labelling in order not to loose overview or to overwrite files. ENVI-met uses a three-level concept to organize the output data:
- Level 1: Storage by folder name
- Level 2: Classification by filename
- Level 3: Metadata information in the . EDX File
Level 1: Storage by folder name
The uppermost level of file organisation starts by sorting the output files into subfolders of the selected output folders. The figure above shows an example of the folder structure of a typical ENVI-met output folder (some folders are only existing in the Advanced version of ENVI-met, others may be added in the course of time). All files in one folder are of the same structure and contain the same set of information, some of the output folders are further organized in sub folders. The following list summarizes the basic content of the folders. For more information, click on the “→(Name)” below.
- → Atmosphere: All information about the state of the atmosphere at different times of model simulation. Definitely the largest set of data and mostly considered as “the” model result (which is not true as the other data are very important, too).
- → Buildings: Data along the canvas (facades and roofs) of the buildings. Includes static data such as material, albedo (folder
STATIC) as well as dynamic data of meteorology along the building and building physics data (folder
DYNAMIC, not in ENVI-met LITE).
- → Inflow: Data about the inflow model of ENVI-met used to represent the surroundings of the model domain that cannot be modelled in the given scale.
- Log A copy of the ENVI-met outputs generated during the model run.
- → Pollutants: Data about pollutant concentration in the model atmosphere (only present if pollutants are used in the model).
- → Radiation: Detailed data sets about the different radiation fluxes in the model.
- → Receptors: Time series and profile data at defined receptor points in the model (if defined)
- → Soil: State of the ENVI-met soil model
- → Solar Access: Detailed analysis on solar access data such as solargrams, sun hours, etc (Full versions of ENVI-met only)
- → Surface: State of the soil surface as an interface between the atmosphere and the soil model
- → Vegetation: State of the vegetation including detailed log of observed 3D plants
In addition, the BIOMet tool will create further folders, by default labled “Biomet”, but with a free choice of names. Future versions or additional modules of ENVI-met will create further folders and file, but the general concept of storge will be the same.
Level 2: Classification by filename
Sorting the output files into folders provides a first system of order in the output data. However, once a file has been moved out of its folder or if several simulations come together, this system is not unique and not persistent. As a solution, the ENVI-met file name generation scheme allows a direct identification of the simulation files and their content.
Each ENVI-met output filename consists of 3 parts:
- Simulation Base Name: This is the given working name for the simulation. You define this name in the .SIMX simulation configuration file. It should be not too log (as more data are added) and unique. In the example above,
urbanLayouthas been selected as basename.
- Type identifier: The type identifier describes the content of the file following the categories listed above. For example
_AT_defines that this file holds atmospheric data. The different content ids are listed in the description of the output files categories and at the end of this page.
- Time of data: The last part of the filename represents the model time the data were taken. In the example above, the file represents the state of the atmosphere (
_AT_) at 13:00 model time. If the data in the file are not time sensitive, this part of the filename is empty. From Version 4.4.3 (Summer 19) onwards, the order of the time step has been changed to Year-Month-Date (YYYY-MM-DD + Time)
Level 3: Metatadata information in EDX file
Level 1 and 2 provide a good information basis about the content of a simulations file and they where the only sources of information in ENVI-met versions prior to V4. However, files get moved and files get renamed. For that reason, starting from ENVI-met Version 4, each data file again holds detailed information about its data type in the metadata stored in the EDX information file, in the
<data_content> section. For all ENVI-met tools, this is the evaluated information when working with data files. All ENVI-met tools try to interpret data files coming from older ENVI-met versions, but this import process might not work in all cases.
Sumary on File Identifiers
|_BLDG_||Building data||Both STATIC and DYNAMIC|
|_SA_||Solar Access||Main 3D Model|
|_SAFAC_||Solar Accerss||Facade and Single Wall data|
|_FX_||Surface data and surface fluxes|
|_VEG_||Vegetation data||Main 3D Model, Observed plants are text files|
Other files are ASCII files.