Quantifying the relationship between land parcel design attributes and intra-urban surface heat island effect via the estimated sensible heat flux

Abstract

Quantifying the relationship between land parcel design attributes (LPDAs) and associated surface urban heat island (SUHI) effect within cities is vital for enhancing urban adaption to artificial climatic modification. Taking four representative urban function zones of downtown Shanghai, China, as an example, this study investigated LPDAs and their associations with the summertime intra-SUHI effect, which was indicated with the parcel-based net blackbody sensible heat flux (NetBBF). Overall, the results revealed that the variation of the parcel-based NetBBFs should be attributed to the land parcels characterized with differential land developmental intensity. The results further showed that stepwise regression (SR) models exhibited lower statistical power for interpreting the relationships between the LPDA metrics and parcel-based NetBBFs, explaining 52.50–54.90% of the variance of the parcel-based NetBBFs. In contrast, the partial least square regression (PLSR) models better interpreted such relationships, explaining 59.9–71.6% of the variance of the parcel-based NetBBFs. The methodology and findings of this study can be referenced to facilitate the official decision-making towards sustainable land development, UHI mitigation, and climatic adaption.