Mapping Local Climate Zones (LCZs) based on urban morphological parameters using GIS

Local Climate Zones (LCZs) refer to a classification system that exists out of 17 classes, 10 of which can be described as urban, proposed as new standard for characterizing and comparing urban landscapes. (Stewart and Oke, 2012; Lehnert et al., 2021). The World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools (WUDAPT, www.wudapt.org) community project mapped until now ~150 cities. WUDAPT has a hierarchic approach to gathering data: Level 0 contains mainly 2-dimensional urban morphological information and rough urban function based on their effect on the local air temperature; Level 1 and 2 provide more detailed 3-dimensional urban morphological information, material composition data and anthropogenic functions at building level, so they are suitable for various meteorological and climate models. The Level 0 procedure relies on a workflow that integrates training areas (TAs) identified using Google Earth and Landsat imagery. A LCZ Generator web application has been further proposed to simplify the process (Demuzere et al., 2021).

All the efforts done until now mainly aim at speeding up and improving the creation of Level 0 maps based on user detection of TAs. In this work, the main objective is to produce a more detailed LCZ map. Specifically, after a brief literature review on LCZ methodology, by collecting morphological data from Digital Elevation Models of several Italian cities, a detailed morphological characterization of the city is carried out through the Geographical Information System (GIS) software. Different physical parameters are estimated such as: planar area index, frontal area index, impervious surface index, aspect ratio, sky view factor, average height, ratio of building area to floor area, many of which are then used for the detailed classification of LCZ classes.

Demuzere et al., 2021. Doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2021.637455

Lehnert et al., 2021. Doi: 10.3390/ijgi10040260

Stewart and Oke, 2012. Doi: 10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00019.1