Abstract
Abstract. Because of the vague distinction between urban and rural areas, the Local Climate Zone (LCZ) scheme was developed to better analyze the effect of Urban Heat Island. To map the LCZs in a city, the World Urban Database and Portal Tool is used as conventional method. However, this requires the assignment of training areas for each LCZ, which entails local knowledge of the area and may introduce errors, as distinction between LCZ types through visual inspection is inconclusive. This paper aims to develop a methodology and GIS tool to enhance and automate the mapping of LCZs using seven LCZ properties (sky view factor, building surface fraction, pervious surface fraction, impervious surface fraction, building height, roughness length, and surface albedo), and apply it in Quezon City, Philippines which comprises varying land use and land cover. Fuzzy Logic was used to determine the membership percentage of 100 m cells to an LCZ type based on these properties. Cellular Automata was implemented using Python to derive the LCZ map from the fuzzy layers. Results show that seven out of ten built-up LCZs and five out of seven land cover LCZs were identified. Through visual inspection on a basemap, the mapped LCZs was confirmed to match with the features of the city. Land Surface Temperature (LST) derived from Landsat 8 showed that each LCZ type displayed temperatures consistent with those observed from literature. The developed methodology and tool is ready to be used in other cities as long as the input layers are generated.
Highlights
1.1 The Local Climate Zones (LCZ) schemeStudies on Urban Heat Island (UHI) generally focus on the significant increase in temperatures in urban cities from the surrounding rural areas (Haashemi et al, 2016; Tzavali et al, 2015; Voogt and Oke, 2003)
A white pixel indicates no membership while a brown pixel indicates a possibility or full certainty that the pixel belongs to the LCZ type
It can be observed that LCZ 6 (Open low-rise) dominates the city with an area covering 42.26% of the city followed by LCZ 3 (Compact low-rise) which covers 29.13% of the total area of the city
Summary
Studies on Urban Heat Island (UHI) generally focus on the significant increase in temperatures in urban cities from the surrounding rural areas (Haashemi et al, 2016; Tzavali et al, 2015; Voogt and Oke, 2003). Reasons for the increase in temperatures are due to the incorporation of artificial materials such as concrete and asphalt which have higher emissivity, and the rise of tall buildings which trap heat in the underlying streets. These heat trapping impervious surfaces directly change the local climate in urban areas (Arathyram and Venugopala, 2012). Within an urban city, variations in the urban atmosphere can be observed as a result of the different urban forms and functions
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