Surface Urban Energy and Water Balance Scheme
What is SUEWS?
SUEWS is a neighbourhood/local-scale urban land surface model that simulates the urban radiation, energy and water balances using commonly measured meteorological variables and surface cover information. It uses an evaporation-interception approach (Grimmond and Oke, 1991), similar to that used in forests, to model evaporation from urban surfaces.
The model represents seven surface types -- paved, buildings, evergreen trees/shrubs, deciduous trees/shrubs, grass, bare soil and water -- and tracks the running water balance of the canopy, soil moisture, and horizontal water movement above and below ground.
SuPy (SUEWS in Python) provides the modern interface, wrapping a Fortran physics engine and integrating with the scientific Python ecosystem (pandas, NumPy, matplotlib).
Key Features
- Energy balance: net all-wave radiation, sensible and latent heat fluxes, storage heat flux, anthropogenic heat
- Water balance: soil moisture, infiltration, runoff, drainage, irrigation demand
- Radiation schemes: NARP, SPARTACUS-Surface (3D), BEERS (mean radiant temperature)
- Storage heat schemes: OHM, AnOHM, ESTM, EHC (explicit heat conduction)
- Building energy: STEBBS (Simple Thermal Energy Balance for Building Scheme)
- Python API: YAML configuration, pandas DataFrames, programmatic simulations
- CLI tools:
suews-run,suews-validate,suews-convert,suews-schema
Quick Start
pip install supy
Run from the command line:
suews-run /path/to/config.yml
Or use the Python API:
from supy import SUEWSSimulation
sim = SUEWSSimulation.from_sample_data()
sim.run()
print(sim.output.summary())
Full documentation: docs.suews.io
Documentation
- Getting Started -- installation and first simulation
- Tutorials -- hands-on guides with sample data
- Input/Output Reference -- configuration and data formats
- Scientific Background -- physics schemes and parameterisations
- Community Forum -- questions, discussion, and support
Citation
If you use SUEWS in your research, please cite:
- Jarvi L, Grimmond CSB, Christen A (2011) The Surface Urban Energy and Water Balance Scheme (SUEWS): Evaluation in Los Angeles and Vancouver. J. Hydrol., 411, 219-237.
- Ward HC, Kotthaus S, Jarvi L, Grimmond CSB (2016) Surface Urban Energy and Water Balance Scheme (SUEWS): Development and evaluation at two UK sites. Urban Climate, 18, 1-32.
See CITATION.cff for machine-readable citation metadata.
Contributing
We welcome contributions from people who engage with the project. See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines. New contributors are encouraged to start on the Community Forum.
Development
git clone https://github.com/UMEP-dev/SUEWS.git && cd SUEWS
uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate
make dev && make test
- Onboarding Guide -- developer workflow and best practices
- Building Locally -- prerequisites, build commands, project structure
- Coding Guidelines -- style conventions and formatting tools
Licence
1 maintainer
Metadata
1 maintainer
Release files for supy 2026.6.5
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Built distributions (wheels)
| File | Reset | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| supy-2026.6.5-cp39-abi3-win_amd64.whl | CPython 3.9 | abi3 | Windows x86-64 | Details |
| supy-2026.6.5-cp39-abi3-manylinux2014_x86_64.manylinux_2_17_x86_64.whl | CPython 3.9 | abi3 | Linux glibc 2.17+ x86-64 | Details |
| supy-2026.6.5-cp39-abi3-macosx_15_0_x86_64.whl | CPython 3.9 | abi3 | macOS 15.0+ x86-64 | Details |
| supy-2026.6.5-cp39-abi3-macosx_15_0_arm64.whl | CPython 3.9 | abi3 | macOS 15.0+ ARM64 | Details |
Total release size: 43.3 MB
Release files / supy-2026.6.5-cp39-abi3-win_amd64.whl
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