Andreas Matzarakis

Model

RayMan Pro – Modelling radiation and thermal indices for the human body

RayMan Pro calculates the mean radiant temperature (Tmrt) and derived thermal indices such as PET, PMV and SET* – for simple and complex environments, including building shadow, vegetation and street canyons.

✓ Free of charge to use
Version

RayMan Pro

Languages

German & English

Basis

VDI Guideline 3787, Part 2

Development

since the 1990s

At a glance

RayMan Pro calculates the radiation environment of a person outdoors – from a single tree to a dense street canyon – and turns it into mean radiant temperature and thermal indices (PET, PMV, SET*).

Version / status
RayMan Pro – stable release in routine use worldwide; further developments are carried over to SkyHelios (see outlook).
System
Windows PC; no special hardware required.
Licence
Free of charge for teaching, research and administrative use. Please register below to receive the download link.
How to cite

Matzarakis, A., Rutz, F., Mayer, H. (2007): Modelling radiation fluxes in simple and complex environments – application of the RayMan model. Int. J. Biometeorol. 51, 323–334, doi:10.1007/s00484-006-0061-8
Matzarakis, A., Rutz, F., Mayer, H. (2010): Modelling radiation fluxes in simple and complex environments: basics of the RayMan model. Int. J. Biometeorol. 54, 131–139, doi:10.1007/s00484-009-0261-0

About the model

The name RayMan stands for “radiation on the human body”. The model calculates the short- and long-wave radiation fluxes from a person's surroundings and derives the mean radiant temperature Tmrt – the most important meteorological input for the human energy balance on sunny days. Buildings, trees and horizon shading (e.g. via fish-eye photographs) can be entered freely or imported, along with topography and meteorological data. From Tmrt, RayMan calculates thermal indices such as PET, PMV and SET*, describing the thermal load experienced by people outdoors. RayMan was developed by Prof. Dr. Andreas Matzarakis together with F. Rutz and H. Mayer at the University of Freiburg, in line with VDI Guideline 3787, Part 2. The current version is called RayMan Pro.

direct diffuse & reflected long-wave from surroundings ground building 6 directions → Tmrt
Radiation fluxes from the sky, ground and surrounding surfaces are combined into Tmrt. Schematic.
Meteorologicaldata Obstacles / treesfish-eye photo Topographylocation, date, time Person: activity,clothing RayMan Proradiation fluxesTmrt PETPMVSET*
From inputs to thermal indices. Schematic.
sky view shadow building
Shading and sky view in a street canyon – the situation RayMan Pro is built to evaluate. Schematic.

Application and use areas

Application

  • Applied meteorology and climatology
  • Landscape and ecological planning
  • Forest and agricultural meteorology
  • Urban meteorology and climatology
  • Health, recreation and tourism

Uses

  • Education and teaching
  • Academic research
  • Governmental and administrative use

Related model and outlook

For continuous, GPU-based calculation of sky view factor and sunshine duration over whole areas, see SkyHelios. Both models can be used together: SkyHelios provides the spatial fields, RayMan Pro the thermal indices.

Selected publications

Request RayMan

RayMan is available free of charge. Please register using the form below – you will then receive the download link by email from Prof. Matzarakis.

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Or write directly to: andreas.matzarakis@meteo.uni-freiburg.de