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Authors
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
While climate change projections for the Mediterranean region indicate an increased exposure to
heatwaves (HW), such prospects are particularly challenging in urban areas, where thermal stress
can be exacerbated by the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. In that regard, understanding spatial
patterns of thermal performance is of the utmost importance, in order to address corresponding
adaptation measures. Local Climate Zones (LCZ) have become the standard typification of Land
Cover/Land Use classes, according to their climatic response. However, the corresponding satellite-
based classification method from the World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools
(WUDAPT) presents accuracy issues when applied to European cities. Several studies have provided
alternative LCZ methodologies, but these usually require data which is not often readily
available (e.g. high-resolution digital surface models), therefore rendereing them hard to replicate.
This study addresses this issue by developing an alternative geographic information
system (GIS)-based method, and the corresponding toolbox, to translate Copernicus datasets into
LCZ maps: Urban Atlas and Corine Land Cover shapefiles are used as the baseline dataset for the
reclassification. The method was proven to be accurate in the five cities used in the case study -
Athens, Barcelona, Lisbon, Marseille, and Naples - 81% overall accuracy, and 0.79 Kappa coefficient,
on average. Results reveal the presence of a diurnal surface UHI, with lower land surface
temperatures (LST) found in tree covered areas. However, similar LST found in the other LCZ
classes (e.g. between compact and sparsely built-up areas) indicates that diurnal patterns of the
urban energy balance components must be considered to better characterise the UHI of these
cities.
Description
Keywords
Local climate zones (LCZ) Urban atlas Urban Heat Island (UHI) Southern European cities
Pedagogical Context
Citation
Oliveira, A., Lopes, A., Niza, S. (2020). Local climate zones from five Southern European cities: an improved GIS-based classification method based on Copernicus data. Urban Climate, 33, 100631. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2020.100631
Publisher
Elsevier