Where infrared.city fits
3,204,804 simulations run on Infrared Core (as of 29 Oct 2026).
infrared.city runs 12 models from one engine, Infrared Core, among them wind, wind comfort, sun, daylight, radiant heat and felt heat (UTCI). It works on real 3D building and terrain meshes, in a browser app, through an API and SDK, and in plugins for Grasshopper, QGIS and ArcGIS. Felt heat for 1 km² takes about 5 s once the geometry is uploaded, and 400 km² took 44 s as four 100 km² runs in parallel. Run times are not like for like across tools: area, grid, simulated hours and physics differ. Sun, sky and radiant heat come from ray tracing. Wind comes from an AI model trained on CFD results, not from a CFD run for each request. The live layer runs a whole city every hour on a forecast, and the same city also runs a typical year or 2050 weather.
- You need felt heat on a 1 m grid in a city, between buildings.
- You need wind and shade together with the heat.
- You must test a design before it is built.
Use both
Satellite data gives the large-scale picture over time. infrared.city gives the street-level detail and the effect of design options.
Facts side by side
| infrared.city | Hydrosat | |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | Simulated felt heat (UTCI), radiant heat, wind, sun and shade at street level | Thermal infrared data and analytics |
| Measured or simulated | Simulation, for the city as it is and for design options | Measured by satellite (thermal infrared) |
| Delivery | Browser app, API and SDK | Web portal, mobile application and API |
The infrared.city values repeat the full comparison. Each value for Hydrosat comes from the sources below.
Sources
- Hydrosat home page , accessed 30 Oct 2026.