Local climate zones classification method from Copernicus land monitoring service datasets: An ArcGIS-based toolbox

Abstract

Local Climate Zones (LCZ) have become a worldwide standard for identifying land cover classes, according to their climate-relevant morphological parameters. The LCZ's are mostly used to evaluate urban climate performance, particularly the relationship between the urban heat island effect (UHI) and the characteristics of the built-up environment. The World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools (WUDAPT) has provided a supervised LCZ classification method based only on moderate resolution free satellite imagery, mostly Landsat 7 or 8 (30 m pixel size, in the visible spectrum brands); however, its’ results are less accurate for European cities. Conversely, alternative geographic information system (GIS)-based methods developed so far require information that is hardly available to all, such as building footprints or heights. Here, the ArcGIS based LCZ from Copernicus Toolbox (LCZC) provides an alternative classification method that uses only freely accessible information from the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS), being possible to replicate it in 800 European urban locations. The method combines Urban Atlas (UA) and Corine Land Cover (CLC) with Tree Cover Density, Dominant Leaf Type and Grassland information, to produce a higher-resolution baseline shapefile that is classified according to each feature's dominant characteristics. The LCZC toolbox output is a LCZ raster map. It has been validated in five European cities: Athens, Barcelona, Lisbon, Marseille, and Naples.•The LCZC toolbox provides an alternative LCZ GIS-based classification, based on freely accessible CLMS datasets.•The use of CLMS shapefile higher-resolution inputs, particularly the UA and CLC datasets, ensures an output LCZ map that has greater detail and higher accuracy.•The availability of CLMS information in 800 European urban areas guarantees that the method can be replicated in those locations.