Studying urban resilience against heat waves using global datasets and a multi-model framework

With climate change leading to a global increase of temperatures, urban living environments become increasingly vulnerable to exacerbated heatwaves. This results in diminishing thermal comfort for its citizens, an increase in heat-related deaths and higher energy-consumption for building cooling. Proper urban design with focus on nature-based solutions and green-blue measures may be one way to help mitigate these effects. 

In our study a modelling framework is developed to support hazard risk mapping, urban design and interventions planning. The framework links with a number of existing models that output air temperature and mean radiant temperature at street level as a function of spatially varying urban characteristics (building density and height, street widths, vegetation types, population density). Tools to calculate common indicators such as UTCI, warm nights or UHI are included. The framework uses globally available datasets, both for land cover characteristics and for meteorological forcing. This allows a quickscan of cities worldwide, even in data-poor study areas. More detailed local datasets can be used if available. Depending on the models selected, the output consists of maps at medium or high resolution (neighbourhood to streetscale) and for short heat-wave periods or at seasonal timescale.

The model framework is tested in the CARMINE project (https://carmine-project.eu/), where it is applied to eight European cities. The modelled air temperatures are validated against Netatmo-observations, a crowd-sourcing measuring network with a high density of stations in urban contexts. After validation the framework will be hooked into digital twins that are developed for each pilot city, so its potential as a decision support system can be assessed.