CityClim project

Understanding climate change & urban heat island effects and taking action.

Climate change has a significant impact on human life in cities, such as habitability, quality of life, etc. Urban modeling typically addresses adverse impacts on human life, such as extended heat or air pollution. For example, acquiring knowledge about the development and distribution of heat stress over different parts of an urban area (city center, residential and commercial areas, industrial areas, streets/tracks, parks, etc.) can be crucial not only for climate-related urban planning, but also for individual everyday decisions.

Description:

Geoanalytics

Customer:

European Commission - Horizon 2020

Links:

https://commission.europa.eu/

https://www.cityclim.eu/

Urban heat islands (UHIs) are emerging with urbanization development, which is changing the thermal and radiative characteristics of natural landscapes. Extreme heat poses significant risks to the world's growing urban populations, and heat stress is likely to escalate with the anthropogenically increased temperatures projected by climate models. Excessive heat, especially in unfavorable combination with humidity and/or air quality, not only affects human health, but also impacts labor productivity and urban metabolism. Measures to mitigate UHIs can be identified by analyzing the source of the problem. Providing actionable and practicable information to address the challenges of climate change mitigation and adaptation and engaging citizens and decision makers from the beginning through user-centered City Climate Services (CCS) requires advanced weather models in combination with data from various sources as well as a state-of-the-art technical environment for the effective development of such services.

Therefore, the CityCLIM project aims to develop an open platform and an advanced urban weather forecasting tool a high-resolution (100 mx 100 m) meteorological model for different cities in Europe using different input sources data, such as in-situ measurements, aerial and satellite data.

The output of the resulting high-resolution information and forecasting tool is used to alert the city and its citizens in near real-time and to create impact maps of different mitigation scenarios that can be implemented in urban areas.

The project consortium:

OHB System AG is the leading German satellite manufacturer for compact to turnkey high-end satellites solutions in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) and for a launch mass of up to 4,000kg for geostationary satellites.

ATB is active as an institute for applied research and in its function as a knowledge transfer organization in national and international research projects. ATB develops software-based solutions for commercial customers, based on the latest and special Internet technologies.

Meteologix AG is one of four companies in the Kachelmann Group. It is a meteorological research and development company that has set itself the goal of expanding the boundaries of weather forecasting and meteorological data processing, e.g. through radar and satellite-based information processing.

The Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research GmbH (UFZ) is one of the world's leading research centers in the field of environmental research and enjoys a high level of social recognition.

The University of Valencia (UVEG), founded in 1499 and originally dedicated to the study of medicine, humanities, theology and law, has today become a modern European university that stands out from others as one of the most important public research institutions in Spain.

OHB Digital Solutions was founded in 1999 as a spin-off company of the Graz University of Technology, Institute of Navigation, as TeleConsult Austria. Its main activities include telecommunications, reliable navigation and information technologies.