S3 | Integrated Planning for Local Climate Resilience: Leveraging Climate Twins and Artificial Intelligence
Integrated Planning for Local Climate Resilience: Leveraging Climate Twins and Artificial Intelligence
Convener: Sascha Henninger | Co-convener: Martin Memmel
Orals
| Wed, 09 Jul, 16:00–17:15 (CEST)|Room Leeuwen 2
Posters
| Attendance Wed, 09 Jul, 17:15–18:30 (CEST) | Display Tue, 08 Jul, 13:30–Thu, 10 Jul, 13:30|Balcony
Orals |
Wed, 16:00
Posters
Wed, 17:15
The session aims to present approaches, methods, and application examples that use planning processes for climate adaptation measures with the help of planning-oriented, urban climatic investigation methods, AI-supported recognition and recording of local climatic phenomena and conditions to identify fields of action and to develop easily manageable building blocks that determine site-adapted recommendations for action and prepare them in such a way that they can be concretely implemented and, in particular, taken into account in municipal urban land-use planning. Such approaches and ideas enable an innovative, applied, planning-oriented urban climatology that can use its climate adaptability for future-oriented, climate-adapted designs and recommendations for action.

One tool for identifying these impacts is the calculation of climate twins. With the help of these climate equivalents, the climate research perspective creates an explanatory path that provides spatial planning with directional certainty and thus a perspective for the future. In addition, the spatial planning approach offers the opportunity to introduce further steps towards optimised urban adaptation to climate change into the scientific and practical planning discourse. This builds a bridge to applied, planning-oriented urban climatology, which is of immense relevance in this area of tension. Furthermore, an AI based process will be developed that is able to carry out a climate inventory of settlements using satellite data. From this, the AI will generate an appropriate scenario that visually distinguishes different areas from each other. This AI-generated and spatially visualisable representation will enable the rapid identification of local climate risk areas.

Orals: Wed, 9 Jul, 16:00–17:15 | Room Leeuwen 2

16:00–16:15
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ICUC12-28
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Onsite presentation
Destination Earth Urban Heat Service 
Filip Lefebre, Dirk Lauwaet, and Nele Veldeman

VITO has developed an Urban Heat service as part of Destination Earth: a flagship initiative of the European Commission to develop an accurate digital model of the Earth on a global scale. This Urban Heat service provides high-resolution urban heat maps for cities across Europe to underpin and motivate potential urban climate adaptation measures. The urban heat maps are generated by means of a physics-based high resolution urban climate model, UrbClim, nested within large-scale atmospheric output provided by state-of-the-art global climate models in the DestinE Digital Twin platform. UrbClim downscales the global climate model results for selected urban areas based on detailed terrain data, providing air temperature and thermal comfort indicators at a spatial resolution of 100m.

Following an extensive stakeholder engagement phase, urban heat maps for the demonstration cities Lisbon and Prague have been generated. The maps include an assessment of the current situation, future climate projections and 5 adaptation scenarios. Output of the model simulations was used as input to calculate a large number of urban heat indicators. An online viewer was developed to allow users to consult all resulting maps and to download the underlying model output data.

An analysis of the results from Lisbon and Prague was performed, showing that the applied climate change scenario has a negative impact on most heat stress indicators in both cities, but the severity depends on which indicator you consider, as air temperature (e.g. Tropical Nights) and extreme event-related (e.g. Lost Working Hours) indicators are impacted the most. The applied adaptation measures have a significant positive effect on most heat stress indicators in both cities, and the combination of different measures together is the most impactful way of improving the local heat stress situation. However, not all heat stress problems can be solved when applying these (outdoor) adaptation measures.

How to cite: Lefebre, F., Lauwaet, D., and Veldeman, N.: Destination Earth Urban Heat Service, 12th International Conference on Urban Climate, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 7–11 Jul 2025, ICUC12-28, https://doi.org/10.5194/icuc12-28, 2025.

16:15–16:30
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ICUC12-140
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Onsite presentation
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The complex interrelation of walking and thermal stress: surprising results from large-scale pedestrian monitoring of a main street using machine vision 
Motti Ruimy and Or Aleksandrowicz

The challenge of increasing walking in cities has attracted considerable attention among urban planners and designers in recent years, focusing mainly on enhancing street connectivity, walking strip safety and continuity, and the short-distance concentration of urban amenities. Interestingly, little attention has been given to the relation between urban design, climatic conditions, and walking. While we assume that an increase in outdoor heat stress would result in a decrease in people’s willingness to walk, empirical evidence on the actual behaviour of pedestrians in response to such conditions is rare. 

This study examines the assumption that pedestrian traffic would probably decrease as thermal stress increases by analysing a large-scale pedestrian count dataset. The dataset was created using machine vision analysis of video streams from two cameras overlooking a poorly shaded main street in Tel Aviv-Yafo. The high temporal resolution (15 months of continuous monitoring) and the high number of counted pedestrians (about 2.5 million) allowed for characterising the street’s “circadian rhythms” for different times of the week and the year while examining if and how the changing climatic conditions affect the nature of these trends and their magnitude. 

Contrary to our hypothesis, the counts revealed that weekday pedestrian traffic increased in the hot season during the daytime and nighttime alike despite the excess and sometimes extreme heat stress pedestrians were exposed to. The data also showed consistent differences in pedestrian flow between weekdays and weekends, with the most profound seasonal difference manifested on weekdays. These findings indicate that urban walking patterns, at least on main streets, may be highly dependent on routine outdoor activity patterns that may have more impact on walking choices than the preference to avoid exposure to severe heat stress. They also highlight the need to further study pedestrian behavioural patterns and their relation to urban microclimatic conditions.

How to cite: Ruimy, M. and Aleksandrowicz, O.: The complex interrelation of walking and thermal stress: surprising results from large-scale pedestrian monitoring of a main street using machine vision, 12th International Conference on Urban Climate, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 7–11 Jul 2025, ICUC12-140, https://doi.org/10.5194/icuc12-140, 2025.

16:30–16:45
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ICUC12-577
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Onsite presentation
Decadal Analysis of Urban Heat Dynamics and UHI Impacts in Indian Cities: Insights from Local Climate Zones and Urban Growth Trajectories
(withdrawn)
Cheolhee Yoo, Glynn Hulley, and Anamika Shreevastava
16:45–17:00
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ICUC12-715
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Onsite presentation
A 3D shading simulation tool to support local climate adaption actions 
Shaojuan Xu, Bastian Heider, and Jonathan Landwehr

Enhancing green infrastructure plays a critical role in urban climate adaptation to mitigate heat stress. Recent studies show that the cooling function of green space is more strongly correlated to its shading effect than its vegetation density. The local governments of Dortmund, Germany, have started to enhance green space and shaded places as part of the heat mitigation strategy, yet they lack practical tools for implementation. To support these actions in practice, we developed a 3D shade simulation tool at the city scale to visualise the shading effect in real-time, quantify shaded hours and simulate tree planting scenarios.

We first identify the surface temperature hotspots using satellite data, then integrate the 3D building model with Level of Detail 2, combine the tree cadastre data and LiDAR point cloud to create the 3D tree model, and finally, transform the 3D building and tree model into an open-access web application.

This web-based tool lets users visualise the shading effect from trees and buildings in real time or at any time. At any given location, users can quantify the accumulated shade hours over any time span at this specific place. The additional interactive tree planting tool allows users to simulate the scenarios after tree planting to simulate the improved shading effect.

This tool has been used for two heat mitigation action projects in the city. Firstly, the senior office used this tool to identify the best-shaded places as cooling spaces and resting places for elderly people. Secondly, the Green Connects project plans to plant 100 trees near Mosselde and Rohdesdiek Street, 50 of which will be on public land and 50 others on private land. With our shading simulation tool, urban planners and citizens can quickly identify areas that lack shading, particularly these temperature hotspots, and then simulate tree planting scenarios for optimised heat mitigation.

How to cite: Xu, S., Heider, B., and Landwehr, J.: A 3D shading simulation tool to support local climate adaption actions, 12th International Conference on Urban Climate, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 7–11 Jul 2025, ICUC12-715, https://doi.org/10.5194/icuc12-715, 2025.

17:00–17:15
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ICUC12-893
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Onsite presentation
Smart City Noise Reduction: Applying Neural Networks for Optimized Urban Planning
(withdrawn)
Mengdi Guo, Xinyu He, Yiqi Liu, and Jianxiang Huang

Posters: Wed, 9 Jul, 17:15–18:30 | Balcony

Display time: Tue, 8 Jul, 13:30–Thu, 10 Jul, 13:30
B10
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ICUC12-649
Co-creation of an interactive climate visualization tool towards the adaptation of Swedish cities to heat  
Jorge H. Amorim, Aitor Aldama Campino, Christian Asker, Carlo Navarra, Tina Schmid Neset, Nico Reski, Isabel Ribeiro, David Segersson, Katerina Vrotsou, Fuxing Wang, Emma Wingstedt, and Lotten Wiréhn

The record hot summer of 2018 and IPCC projections for Northern Europe have raised awareness of the potential impacts of heat on human comfort and health even over high-latitude cities. However, only one-third of Swedish municipalities have developed routines, checklists and action plans to counter extreme heat. It is amply agreed that the creation of adaptation strategies and action plans for heatwaves in the future should be based on reliable, detailed and tailored climate data, which is lacking.

Realising this challenge, this study presents the results from the on-going multi-disciplinary research project BRIGHT - Advancing knowledge and tools for the adaptation of Swedish cities to heat, with a focus on:

(1) an event-based dynamical downscaling of the urban climate of selected Swedish cities for present and future climate. Results are presented at both 300 m and 1 m resolution with the goal of providing a complete description of the meteorological conditions affecting human comfort.

(2) summer campaigns with a network of low-cost thermohygrometers for the period 2022-2024. These observations provide a better representation of the spatial variability of temperature and humidity across different local climate zones. We look specifically at the urban heat island of Stockholm and the cooling effect of parks.

(3) a citizen sensing mobile application has been developed and put into action during the summers of 2023 and 2024 with the objective of engaging urban dwellers in providing feedback on perceived thermal comfort. These results are analysed with the help of local weather observations and model data.

(4) an interactive visualization tool prototype is being co-designed with municipal stakeholders with the goal of assisting in their climate adaptation work. This tool enables the identification of hot spots, which may represent an additional risk during a heat wave, and of cooler areas, usually associated with urban green infrastructure.

How to cite: Amorim, J. H., Aldama Campino, A., Asker, C., Navarra, C., Schmid Neset, T., Reski, N., Ribeiro, I., Segersson, D., Vrotsou, K., Wang, F., Wingstedt, E., and Wiréhn, L.: Co-creation of an interactive climate visualization tool towards the adaptation of Swedish cities to heat , 12th International Conference on Urban Climate, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 7–11 Jul 2025, ICUC12-649, https://doi.org/10.5194/icuc12-649, 2025.

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