V 24.11

New features

• New optional smoothing of Bourke contour lines using an adjustable Gaussian filter
• Draw wind rose segments in pie shapes instead of triangles
• Enable the export of shape files for “Bourke” contour lines, buildings and the dispersion area
• Enable the evaluation of hourly means for a percentile evaluation when the calculation has been performed with sub-hourly dispersion times (15, 20 or 30 minutes)
• Add support for the “GRAL Reproducible Results” option

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug that crashed the percentile evaluation for odour calculations due to a missing parameter
• Fixed a bug when adding a source group but not saving it, and then trying to remove the existing source group in a source item dialog box

V24.04

This is a service release that fixes minor bugs and adds support for AVX512 vector extensions for GRAL
Fixed bugs:

• Catch null or empty strings when trimming a string for text boxes or labels
• Add support for the GRAL AVX512 vector extensions
• Catch an exeption when reading an empty landuse file

V23.11

What's Changed

New features

• The application has been transformed to .NET8
  With .NET8, the current performance improvements and bug fixes are adopted
  A MONO version of the GUI is also available for Linux users
  The GRAL release is no longer published as all-in-one file by default
  This means that user must install .NET8 Runtime (Windows OS requires the .NET8 Desktop
  Runtime) and therefore benefits in several ways
  ▪ Smaller published files
  ▪ Fewer false warnings from anti-virus programs
  ▪ Better performance
  ▪ Individual setting options from Runtime for the respective computer in the *.runtimecon-fig.json file
  ▪ Same compilation for Windows, Linux and MacOS
  For windows users, a published version as a single-fill is still available in a separate download
• Layout Manager, Screenshot
  Predefined Hue-Chroma-Luminance (HCL) contour map colors can be used
• Scale bar and contour map color scale
  Can be set to a map position (not just screen position as before) so that the bar/color scale will be moved and zoomed with the map
• "Select multiple points”-Dialog
  Enable editing of existing rows - create new lines only when the cursor is at an empty row
• Enable a user defined path for the emission modulation settings and result files
  A modulation can be saved by defining a separate path (usually a project subfolder). The result files are then also stored in this folder. This option can be used to create different modulations
  and evaluate them in parallel. The used modulation is stored in the folder and can be assigned to the results
• Additional output in the evaluation info forms
  The path used for modulation, the names and paths of the result files and the number of unreadable *.grz files are specified as additional information
• Rendering contour maps when needed only
  For large projects, rendering the maps takes a very long time when starting the GIS window.
  Now only visible maps are rendered, other maps are rendered, when the visibility is changed.

Bug fixes

• Layout Manager: The variable position of the color scale has been solved, if multiple scales were visible
• Use the anemometer height of a local observation as default value for - the meteorological classification
• Prevent the pollutant type from being changed while the modulation is being set
• Fix incorrectly displayed emission factors for the receptor evaluation and provide an option to cancel the receptor evaluation
• Use new functions for searching files within the project path - needed when the absolute path has been changed, e.g. when a project has been moved to another folder
• Long folder names are displayed truncated
• Wind speed and wind direction values are rounded when importing from *.akterm files
• Copy the previous used coverage value to new created vegetation data items
• Remove an initial empty item when importing point source or receptor data to an empty data structure (this bug led to an additional item on position 1)

Download pre-compiled binaries: https://gral.tugraz.at/

Full Changelog: V2209...V23.11

V22.09 Release

1. The application has been transformed to .NET6

It provides the following benefits:
• improved High-DPI support for scaled high resolution screens
• better performance: reading *.wnd files is 2 times faster, redraw of huge concentration maps about 30% faster
• publishing of single files including the entire required framework
• native Windows-ARM support
• improvements due to future developments by Microsoft

2. Files in the Meteorology folder are no longer deleted automatically

3. The routine for reading in the wind fields no longer breaks if a wind field is missing or cannot be read, but searches for other existing wind fields and reads them if possible

4. During the match process a preview of the matched wind rose at a wind measurement point can be displayed, but now it is also possible to write a temporary *.met file, which can be analyzed during the match process in the Meteorology tab

5. In the Layout Manager, the associated file and the displayed name can be checked and changed for contour lines

Do you know which contour lines are displayed when you copy or move a project? When you are not sure, you can use this new option to check or change the displayed contour line data. This option also allows loading a new raster file from the layout manager

6. New dialog for the statistical conversion equations from NOx to NO2
7. Bugs in the control view when showing emissions are fixed
8. When displaying the total emissions, the evaluation of the emission in the transient mode is now performed for the available time period
9. Duplicate entries are fixed when pasting coordinates to receptor and point sources
10. When evaluating the concentrations, the output window is no longer closed automatically. The average emisson modulation for each source group and the output files are displayed
11. Enumeration issues have been fixed when selecting objects using the left or right mouse button

V22.03 Release

Bug fixes

• The wind roses for stability classes are determined the same way as the wind roses of the wind speed with classified wind data and applied bias correction (rounding adjusted)
• The display of vertical slices of 3D concentration fields (transient mode) has been fixed
• Enumeration issues has been fixed when selecting objects using the left or right mouse button

The version is available at: https://gral.tugraz.at/ or https://github.com/GralDispersionModel/GRAL/releases/tag/V22.03

V21.09 Release

GUI Improvements

• Creation of concentration time series for arbitrary raster cells as post processing based on the *.grz files (Menu bar “Analyze results” – “Generate time series for several evaluation points”) enabled
• Creation of GRAL wind “Time-series” for arbitrary raster cells based on the *.gff files (Windfield analysis – Windrose button or menu bar “Windfield analysis” – “Wind statistics at a point”) enabled
• Item dialogs are no longer TopMost windows but child forms of the Domain window. This means that these dialogs do not lose their focus when the mouse pointer leaves the dialog. In addition, the dialog will be minimized with the domain window. Furthermore, the dialogs are clipped to the Domain window.
• Each item dialog got an additional cancel button to avoid unintentional modifications.
• The question whether a new shape of a source should be applied is no longer asked for new sources, where no shape is available yet.
• Better performance for the high percentiles calculation
• An optional evaluation of GRAMM wind vectors at a height above sea (absolute height) is enabled
• New option for displaying GRAL wind vectors in a relative height above terrain or in an absolute height
• The GRAMM grid heights are displayed either for each cell (as used up to V 20.09) or per corner point (as used in GRAMM) using the new menu entry “View –> Show cell heights for -> “
• Progress bars showing the real progress and additional cancel buttons for further long taking operations
• GUI settings: enable/disable automatic scaling when loading/drawing vector maps
• GUI settings: it is possible either loading the entire wind file (default) or discard lines with wind speed 0 and wind direction 0 or shuffle the wind direction for lines with wind speed 0.
• GUI settings: You can now select whether GRAL concentration files and GRAMM wind fields should be deleted or moved to the recycle bin when they are deleted. Deleting is faster, moving to the recycle bin is safer. The option “move to the recycle bin” is enabled by default!
• Use the unit kg/h as optional input for the emission rates of line sources in the user dialog. The emission rates are still saved as kg/h/km and converted within the dialog using the total length of the line source.
• Support for various wind rose sector widths in the wind rose view
• Further improvement of the 2 screen usability
• Support for the new GRAL options (deactivation of GRAL Online and Prognostic Sub Domain reduction)
• You can write meteorological files *.met from the GUI. Therefore, for example, an imported *.akt or *.akterm file can be saved as a *.met file or an imported subset of a large *.met file (e.g. one or more months or days) can be saved as new *.met file.
• Preview the matched wind roses for the used meteorological stations during the match process (before you finish the match process). This makes it possible to improve the adjustment of the match parameters, because the results at the meteorological stations can be visualized in advance while tuning the parameters.
• Reduce the number of matched weather situations. You can set a value (0 to 90) to apply a bonus value to the calculated vectorial error for already used weather situations at the match tuning process. A value of 0 means no bonus (default behavior), 90 applies the maximum bonus (90 %) for the wind vector of already used situations.
  How to use this option?
  Define a value and press the “Repeat” or the auto tuning “Start” button. The number of used situations (the concatenation option is not considered here) will be displayed in the dialog. The preview for the matched situations shows the resulting wind rose for the selected meteorological station. Here you see an example.
  Whether and how much the number of situations can be reduced depends on the specific issue. In the case of odor dispersion, a reduction is not advisable; in the case of large-scale infrastructure projects, a reduction can certainly make sense (the fewer situations, the faster the calculation).
  The results of the reduction can be visualized in advance by using the above new wind rose preview.
• Automatic Match to Observation tuning function
  Choosing the matching parameters is a challenge for many users. Especially with many meteorological stations, even for power users this is not an easy task.
  After the GRAMM wind fields have been read and a first match tuning with the standard parameters has been processed, the auto tuning can be started.
  Slider: you can use the slider to select whether you want to represent the wind vectors or the stability classes more accurately.
  Checkboxes: use the checkboxes to select the optimization method: V for the vectorial and C for the component method. The cycles for the iteration can be selected using the numeric up-down item.
  Auto Tuning Factors: a new column in the DataGridView enables the setting for a weighting factor for the automatic tuning process. This factor is applied to find the best weighting (and direction) factor for the automatic tuning process. A value of 0 means, the station is not used for the auto tuning optimization. The higher the factor, the stronger the weighting for the meteorological station.
  Once the auto-match is finished, you can check the percentile results V10% to V60% and SC0/SC1 (if you like, you can also use the preview of the matched wind roses), change some parameters (weighting factor or direction factor, the latter is not active in the vectorial mode) and then start either a default match (“Repeat” button) or a new auto-match (when changing the Auto Tuning factor or if you like to apply additional iterations).
• The matching optimizer is now partially parallelized but is still quite time consuming, especially when several stations are considered.

Bug fixes

• Fix the reuse of shape objects (problem, when using shape files with multiple parts)
• Reset the cell heights view when creating a new GRAL domain area
• Fix a bug for walls having only 2 edge points (such walls were ignored when reloading the project)
• Correction of the cell index calculation (elimination of rounding errors from double to int)
• Fix invalid reset cancellation tokens (avoid NullReferenceException)
• Fix a bug in the GRAMM terrain mesh generation (one offset error); use a new terrain interpolation for the GRAMM terrain mesh, fix incorrect NoData handling
• Disable controls in the “Special Settings” dialog if a project is locked
• Fix a bug if no item is selected in the most recent files dialog
• Fix the display of the adaptive roughness settings when loading a project
• Improved Linux compatibility
• Fixed a rare error when reading the *.scl files or writing *.wnd files for the GRAMM export function
• Fix unit of odor sources at the item info form (MOU/h instead of OU/h)
• Reset the new option for the conversion from kg/h to kg/h/km when selecting a new line source using the slider
• Disable the selection of source groups for the receptor evaluation, because the evaluation delivers incorrect results when some source groups are not included
• A possible division by 0 has been fixed in the emission modulation preview window
• It is possible that an area source is not included in the file cadestre.dat if too large grids are set for area sources or the area sources are strongly divided. To avoid this problem, the raster size is decreased during rasterization until at least two subareas are generated per area source.
• Fix an incorrectly displayed sum emission in the deposition dialog
• Enable to close the Select Item dialog with a double click on the selected item
• Enable all supported separator characters when showing the file emissions_timeseries.txt or when summing up the total emissions
• Fix wrong dates (year) in created GRAMM meteorological time series files
• Fixed incorrect values on the GRAL progress bar
• Fixed an error message during the Match-to-Observation process when the user closes all message windows during the process
• Correct initialization the display settings for the GRAL roughness lengths file
• The forms for meteorological data are no longer opened right above the main window, to prevent the main window from being closed unintentionally

Full Changelog: V20.09...V21.09

Near-final release of V21.09

V21.09RC2 compared to V21.09Beta4

• GRAL: deposition within vegetation areas: by default, GRAL increases the deposition velocity within vegetation areas by a factor of “1.5 * Coverage” for gases and the particle classes PM2.5 and PM10 and by a factor of “3 * Coverage” for particles PM30 and larger. Coverage is a value that can be entered for each vegetation area.
  Now it is possible to replace these fixed factors 1.5 and 3 with your own factors. Thus, in combination with the coverage value, a spatial varying deposition velocity can be set.
  If you want to specify your own scaling factors, you have to create a file named “VegetationDepoFactor.txt” in the Computation folder. The first line specifies the scaling factor for gases, PM2.5 and PM10, the second line the scaling factor for PM30 and larger. The user defined deposition velocity for each source is subsequently increased by the value “Factor * Coverage” within vegetation zones.

• GRAL: a slight overestimation of the deposition velocity has been fixed

• GRAL: Some performance optimizations using .NET5 features were applied

• GUI: an error in the wind rose display when using classified wind data has been fixed

• GUI: double clicks on the same point are removed when digitizing elements

V21.09 Beta4

GUI 21.09Beta4

New Features

• Support for various wind rose sector withs in the wind rose view
• Further improvement of the 2 screen usability
• Support for the new GRAL options (deactivation of GRAL Online and Prognostic Sub Domain reduction)
• New option for displaying GRAL wind vectors in a relative height above terrain or in an absolute height

Bugfixes

• Fix the reuse of shape objects (problem, when using shape files with multiple parts)
• Reset the new option for the conversion from kg/h to kg/h/km when selecting a new line source using the slider
• Reset the cell heights view when creating a new GRAL domain area
• Fix a bug when a wall has only 2 edge points (such walls were ignored when reloading the project)
• Correction of the cell index calculation (elimination of rounding errors from double to int)
• Fix invalid reset cancellation tokens (avoid NullReferenceException)
• Fix a bug in the GRAMM terrain mesh generation (one offset error); use a new terrain interpolation for the GRAMM terrain mesh, fix incorrect NoData handling
• Disable controls in the “Special Settings” dialog if a project is locked
• Fix a bug, if no item is selected in the most recent files dialog
• Fix the display of the adaptive roughness settings when loading a project

GRAL 21.09Beta1

Improvements

• Improve the arithmetic accuracy of the prognostic flow field calculation
• Reduction of the memory requirement
• Output of a file “PrognosticSubDomainAreas.txt” containing the prognostic sub-domains areas
• Optional reduction of prognostic sub-domains depending on the distance to sources (further reduction of memory requirements and
• computing time for large domain areas)
• Optional deactivation of the online output (reduction of file accesses during the calculation)

Bugfixes

• Fix the rasterization of the vegetation mesh

GRAL and GRAMM

• Linux: compiled for .NET5 as single file application

V21.09Beta3

GUI 21.09Beta3

New Feature:

Create concentration time series for arbitrary raster cells as post processing based on the *.grz files (Menu bar “Analyze results” – “Generate time series for several evaluation points”)

New Feature:

Create GRAL wind “Time-series” for arbitrary raster cells based on the *.gff files (Windfield analysis – Windrose button or menu bar “Windfield analysis” – “Wind statistics at a point”)

New Approach:

Item dialogs are no longer TopMost windows but child forms of the Domain window. This means these dialogs do not lose their focus when the mouse pointer leaves the dialog. In addition, the dialog will be minimized with the domain window. Furthermore, the dialogs are clipped to the Domain window. Each item dialog got an additional cancel button to avoid unintentional modifications. The question whether a new shape of a source should be applied is no longer asked for new sources, where no shape is available yet.

Improvement:

Better performance for the high percentiles calculation

New Option:

An optional evaluation of GRAMM wind vectors at a height above sea (absolute height) is enabled

Improvement:

Progress bars showing the real progress and additional cancel buttons for further long taking operations

New Option:

GUI setting: enable/disable automatic scaling when loading/drawing vector maps

New Features for the “Match to Observation” function

New Feature:

Preview the matched wind roses for the used meteorological stations during the match process (before you finish the match process)

New Option:

Reduce the number of matched weather situations. Therefore, you can set a value (0 to 90) to apply a bonus value to the calculated vectorial error for already used weather situations at the match tuning process. A value of 0 means no bonus (default behavior), 90 applies the maximum bonus (90 %) for the wind vector of already used situations. How to use this option? Define a value and press the “Repeat” or the auto tuning “Start” button. The number of used situations (the concatenation option is not considered here) will be displayed in the dialog. The preview for the matched wind field shows the resulting wind rose for the selected meteorological station.

Breaking Changes:

The new Auto Tuning Factor affects the match tuning in such a way that stations with an Auto Tuning Factor of 0 are no longer considered in the tuning process. This makes it possible to include additional stations in the match to observation process and deactivate/activate them during the match process. However, you can use the preview of the wind rose at all stations in the match process. New created match settings files *.mmo are updated to include the new Automatic Match to Observation tuning options and therefore loading these files is not possible with GUI versions prior to 21.09.

New option: Automatic Match to Observation Tuning Function

After the GRAMM wind fields have been read and a first match tuning with the standard parameters has been processed, the auto tuning can be started.

Automatic Tuning Settings

Slider:

You can use the slider to select whether you want to represent the wind vectors or the stability classes more accurately.

Checkboxes:

Use the checkboxes to select the optimization method: V for the vectorial and C for the component method. The cycles for the iteration can be selected using the numeric up-down item.

Auto Tuning Factors:

A new column in the DataGridView enables the setting for a weighting factor for the automatic tuning process. This factor is applied to find the best weighting (and direction) factor for the automatic tuning process. A value of 0 means, the station is not used for the auto tuning optimization. The higher the factor, the stronger the weighting for the meteorological station. Once the auto-match is finished, you can check the percentile results V10% to V60% and SC0/SC1 (if you like, you can also use the preview of the adjusted wind roses), change some parameters (weighting factor or direction factor, the latter is not active in the vectorial mode) and then start either a default match (“Repeat” button) or a new auto-match (when changing the Auto Tuning factor or if you like to apply additional iterations). The matching optimizer is now partially parallelized but is still quite time consuming, especially when several stations are considered.

GUI Bugfixes

• Improved Linux compatibility
• Fixed a rare error when reading the *.scl files or writing *.wnd files for the GRAMM export function
• Fix unit of odor sources at the item info form (MOU/h instead of OU/h)

V 20.09 release

New features
• It is possible to delete items or edit item data (name, height, source group number, emission rate) within the search and filter dialog
• Geo referenced item information is shown in an own layer
• A wind speed cumulative distribution diagram has been added
• The legend and the info box within the wind rose form can be moved
• Ascending or descending line sources have been enabled
• Shape file types PointZ and PolylineZ are supported
• It is possible to show solely already existing weather situations in the dispersion situation dialog
• Multiple height slices can be selected for the evaluation of GRAL results
• Enable access to special GRAL options from the GUI (wrench button)
• The building rasterization process can be controlled by the user (Building cell coverage)
• The evaluation routines support large domain areas by using jagged arrays
• Enable a progress bar for the mathematical raster operations
• Support for spatially-varying surface roughness values (“Adaptive Surface Roughness”)

Bugfixes
• Fixed the reading of the changed file format for the GRAL receptor meteorology file data (GRAL_Meteozeitreihe.dat)
• Fixed the shape import for receptors
• The anemometer height defined in *.met files is copied to the match to observation dialog
• Fixed the 3D view of GRAL topographies with receptors
• Fixed several tooltips
• Fixed the GRAMM start process for the new *.exe GRAMM core for multiple instances
• Fixed an error when creating the file IIn.dat with Taiwanese date format
• Fixed a crash when the object manager was started but no layers were available
• Improved reading of background maps when the absolute path in the bitmap world file has been changed
• Fixed an error in the color and value settings for contour lines in the layout manager when a vertical scroll bar is present
• Fixed the selection of traffic situations in the NEMO line source dialog and a bug in the NEMO interface
• Fix the windrose dialog for tabbed *.met files
• Fix the meteorological analysis tool for empty or invalid *.met files
• Enable large arrays for the evaluation of result files (> 2 GByte)
• The evaluation of DayMax values has been fixed
• Commas or a semicolons at time series names are replaced by an underline character
• Fix math raster operations for cases where the string conversion returned numbers in scientific format
• Improved the Linux-MONO compatibility