Company Profile

Cities are increasingly threatened by rising heat stress, caused by the combined effects of climate change and the urban heat island effect. In response, INKEK was founded in 2013 as a spin-off from the University of Kassel to address and combine the growing demands for climate mitigation and climate adaptation. Our primary objective is to support and advise European municipalities and authorities in all aspects of urban climate and energy transition.

INKEK conducts mesoclimatic and microclimatic analysis and prepared several urban climate maps for major German cities such as Frankfurt, Kassel and Erfurt to support knowledge-based urban planning. Furthermore, we successfully completed numerous international projects, including Kunshan, China, where we focused on urban ventilation patterns and strategies to improve air quality.

Beyond qualitative consulting, INKEK utilizes several computer-assisted workflows to simulate and analyze urban climate processes. Our interdisciplinary team developed mod_GIS, a modular geographic information system designed to create large-scale, high-resolution mesoclimate maps for regional planning. Within mod_GIS, the two-dimensional, mathematical-physical simulation model KLAM_21 was implemented to calculate cold air flows in orographically structured terrain.

To investigate the microclimate, INKEK primarily uses the holistic, three-dimensional simulation model ENVI-met. The non-hydrostatic model is widely applied for microscale assessments of urban environments and to compare various climate adaptation scenarios. The high spatial and temporal resolutions allow for the analysis of small-scale interactions between individual buildings, surfaces and plants.

INKEK also developed workflows to quantitatively and qualitatively asses the impacts of short-term and long-term climate change in cities based on the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) and the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

 

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