Thesis subject

MSc thesis topic: Urban scaling of Urban heat

More and more people are living in urban environments, but those environments are not necessarily good habitats. For one, characteristics of the urban environment make that cities are typically hotter than surrounding areas. For one, human activities in cities produce heat. At the same time, and more importantly, heat is trapped by absorption, reduced air flow and reduced evapotranspiration. The urban morphology and presence of vegetation are important factors to these mechanisms.

In high-income countries urban heat is already one of the deadliest metereological hazards. In addition, heat influences day-to-day activities, ability to work, mental health, etc. (Ebi et al., 2021).

With ongoing urbanisation and climate change, heat and heat impacts are expected to get even worse. It is important to increase our understanding of the mechanisms behind urban heat to build cities that are prepared for a hotter future.

Urban scaling analyses have uncovered systematic relationships between urban characteristics and city size for cities worldwide. Doing an urban scaling analysis of heat-related urban morphology and city size enables us to further understand the relationship between our urban environments and heat. In addition, urban scaling is a powerful method to identify cities that perform better or worse than expected from city size, i.e. cities that can be examples of how to effectively tackle heat.

Background

Urban morphology is strongly related to urban heat. Stewart and Oke (2012) have used this to create Local Climate Zones (LCZ), a classification system in which one group has similar thermal characteristics. Some classes are for example compact high-rise, compact midrise, open high-rise, open midrise. Temperatures are generally less high in open midrise than in compact high-rise areas. Oliveira et al. (2020) created a toolbox to classify the LCZ’s for a given study area, based on Copernicus Land Monitoring Service data. The European Environmental Agency has commissioned Wageningen Research to apply the approach by Oliveira et al. (2020) to all Functional Urban Areas in Europe. This newly generated dataset opens up exciting possibilities for a comparative analysis of Europe’s cities.

As we analyse datasets that have already been generated, this topic mainly uses GIS methods for the analyses.

Relevance to research/projects at GRS or other groups

With this research you will contribute to an ongoing
PhD research project and work with new datasets that are being generated by the
applied spatial research group for the European Environmental Agency.

Requirements

  • GIS proficiency: Familiarity with GIS is essential. You’ll work with spatial data layers, perform analyses, and create maps.
  • R basics: Performing the analyses in R is a pre.

Literature and information

  • Bettencourt, L., & West, G. (2010). A unified theory of urban living. Nature, 467(7318), 912-913.
  • Ebi, K. L., Capon, A., Berry, P., Broderick, C., de Dear, R., Havenith, G., ... & Jay, O. (2021). Hot weather and heat extremes: health risks. The lancet, 398(10301), 698-708.
  • Oliveira, A., Lopes, A., & Niza, S. (2020). Local climate zones classification method from Copernicus land monitoring service datasets: An ArcGIS-based toolbox. MethodsX, 7, 101150.
  • Stewart, I. D., & Oke, T. R. (2012). Local climate zones for urban temperature studies. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 93(12), 1879-1900.

Theme(s): Human – space interaction