Valerie Sifton leads the Weather and Climate Insights Team at CPP Wind. With more than 20 years of experience in Wind Engineering and climate analytics, Valerie has spent more than half that time leading a multi-disciplinary team developing climate models, datasets, and software tools for climate and weather-related studies in the built environment. She conducts climate assessments for a broad spectrum of services and industries including such applications as safety and serviceability design, operations, and forensics, with a particular focus on extreme winds.
Valerie developed a new methodology for assessing the wind climate and risk for “supertall” (>300 m) towers leveraging full physics weather simulation models and has worked on several of the tallest buildings in the world, including Burj Khalifa and Jeddah Tower. More recently she directed an ambitious project assessing design wind speeds and other climate design criteria for seven countries in the Middle East. Leveraging a long term, high-resolution 3-D weather simulation model, a Monte Carlo simulation of Cyclones, and all historical data available, maps of extreme wind speeds for design as well as climate zones and other climate design criteria were developed and have been published in the 2018 versions of the Saudi Building Code and Energy Conservation Code and were the basis of the design wind speeds in the 2021 Dubai Building Code.
