ENLIGHT – ENabling the anaLysIs of Global urban HeaT

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Benjamin Bechtel
• Subject Area: Physical Geography
• Term: from 2019 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 437467569

Elevated temperatures in cities coupled with the concentration of vulnerable populations represent a major risk to the health and well-being of urban citizens. This is expected to aggravate in the future due to climate change and further urbanisation. Climate projections show warmer climates for most large urban areas, yet today they typically neglect the urban effect, i.e. the Urban Heat Island (UHI). Cities thus represent a critical spatial nexus where: climate drivers are concentrated; climate hazards are accentuated and; population exposure is greatest.The challenges of risk management are multifaceted but the role of cities in climate adaptation and mitigation strategies was lately acknowledged by global initiatives. Nevertheless, there are still multiple scale mismatches between urban governance and climate adaptation and mitigation actions. The right data at the right scale is an essential prerequisite for developing fit-for-purpose urban climate policies and strategies for risk assessment and management.The creation of a consistent urban database for urban-focused modelling application studies is the aim to the World Urban Database and Access Portal Tool (WUDAPT) project. This uses the Local Climate Zones (LCZ) categorisation scheme, which describes urban landscapes as composed of neighbourhoods that have distinct climate impacts. LCZ mapping, developed by the PI, has been widely been used in climate research including model development.The overarching goal of this project is to develop a generic methodology that enables consistent analysis of UHIs worldwide and thus in perspective a better integration of urban climate science into policies. In the requested phase I (3 years) we have 4 objectives: 1) a global urban database for climate studies, 2) an extensive database on the urban thermal effect (UHI), 3) assessment of the intra- and inter-urban heat island variation in relation to context, meteorology and topography; and 4) evaluation of a novel urban modelling tool that will enable to quantify the impact of heat adaptation and mitigation planning policies in phase II. Therefore, LCZs will be mapped globally and consistent data of different UHI types will be derived from remote sensing and crowd sourcing. These data provide the basis for firstly generating the thermal climatology for cities, secondly linking these data to both the LCZ maps and the weather conditions, and finally, model evaluation under various background conditions.These ambitious objectives draw heavily on in-house developed methodologies, novel datasets, open-source tools, continued international collaborations, and community-driven research programs. The project will constitute an essential contribution to upcoming assessments by global frameworks (IPCC, WMO) and provide valuable information to support disaster risk management, urban planning and governance.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants