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An Adaptive Method for Estimating Urban Heat Island Intensity and Footprint

SDL Internship/Fellowship Program

Xinyue Yang

Supervisor: Yongze Song

Curtin University

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Outline

Research Background
Statement of the problem
Research methods
Research results
References

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Research Background

Definition: “The Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI) refers to the phenomenon where urban areas experience

significantly higher temperatures compared to their surrounding rural areas.”

History:

- 1819 British chemist Luke Howard examined The Climate of London

- Modern Era “Grandfathers”: Robert Bornstein, Tim Oke

Implications:

- Human comfort (+/-)

- Energy consumption (+/-)

- Infrastructure Longevity and Maintenance

- Socioeconomic Inequality

- Ecosystems and Biodiversity

1. Thacker, Scott, Daniel Adshead, Marianne Fay, Stéphane Hallegatte, Mark Harvey, Hendrik Meller, Nicholas O’Regan, Julie Rozenberg, Graham Watkins, and Jim W Hall. 2019. "Infrastructure for sustainable development." Nature Sustainability 2 (4): 324-331.

2. Song, Y., & Wu, P., 2021. Earth Observation for Sustainable Infrastructure: A Review. Remote Sensing. 13(8), 1528.

Fig.1 Urban heat island illustration

Source: http://vortex.accuweather.com

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Literature review

Category	Content	Citation
Estimation methods	UHI intensity UHI footprint	Yang at al., 2023
Factors influencing UHI	Urban morphology Anthropogenic heat emission Linear infrastructure impact Climate change	Kurniati & Nitivattananon, 2016; Wong et al., 2016; Zhou et al, 2018
Mitigation strategies	Green roofs High-albedo surfaces Urban vegetation	Luo et al., 2023; Zhu et al., 2021

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Literature review

Mean LST difference between urban area and surrounding suburban area

UHI intensity

UHI footprint

the footprint is determined by the area under the surface of the fitted LST

Global Surface UHI Explorer: https://yceo.yale.edu/research/global-surface-uhi-explorer, developde by T. Chakraborty

Cubic smoothing spline
Temperature Decay Method

Source:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2023.113777

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Statement of the problem

Research Question:

How can the spatial heterogeneity of the SUHI effect be

characterized and quantified?

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Research methods

i=1

i=2

i=3

i=4

i=5

Create equal-area buffers
Divide the buffer using sectoral partitioning
Fit LST temperature within each sector
Extract inflection points
Extract intensity and footprint

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Research results

The temperature decay curves in different regions may exhibit opposite trends.

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References

Voogt, J. A., & Oke, T. R. (2003). Thermal remote sensing of urban climates. Remote Sensing of Environment, 86(3), 370-384.
Wong, P. P. Y., Lai, P. C., Low, C. T., Chen, S., & Hart, M. (2016). The impact of environmental and human factors on urban heat and microclimate variability. Building and Environment, 95, 199-208.
Chakraborty, T., & Lee, X. (2019). Land cover-based urban heat island quantification. Environmental Research Letters, 14(9), 095003.
Kurniati, A. C., & Nitivattananon, V. (2016). Factors influencing urban heat island in Surabaya, Indonesia. Sustainable Cities and Society, 27, 99-105.
Zhou, X., & Chen, H. (2018). Impact of urbanization-related land use land cover changes and urban morphology changes on the urban heat island phenomenon. Science of the Total Environment, 635, 1467-1476.
Yang, X., Yao, L., & Zhang, J. (2019). Analyzing urban heat island intensity and footprint using multi-source data. Science of the Total Environment, 658, 152-162.
Kim, S. W., & Brown, R. D. (2021). Urban heat island (UHI) variations within a city boundary: A systematic literature review. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 148, 111256.
Yang, Q., Xu, Y., Tong, X., Huang, X., Liu, Y., Chakraborty, T. C., ... & Hu, T. (2023). An adaptive synchronous extraction (ASE) method for estimating intensity and footprint of surface urban heat islands: A case study of 254 North American cities. Remote Sensing of Environment, 297, 113777.
Luo, Y., Yang, J., Shi, Q., Xu, Y., Menenti, M., & Wong, M. S. (2023). Seasonal cooling effect of vegetation and albedo applied to the LCZ classification of three Chinese megacities. Remote Sensing, 15(23), 5478.
Zhu, Z., Zhou, D., Wang, Y., Ma, D., & Meng, X. (2021). Assessment of urban surface and canopy cooling strategies in high-rise residential communities. Journal of Cleaner Production, 288, 125599.