
URCLIM
Urban Climate Services
URCLIM project develops a general methodology to produce integrated Urban Climate Services for urban planners and related stakeholders, using open urban data and regional climate data, and to evaluate the uncertainties.
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A generic tool to produce urban morphological and buildings’ indicators from open datasets is built.Among the indicators are, at the scale of each block: building or road density, building type and use, mean height and Local Climate Zones.
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Downscaling methodologies are developed from Euro-Cordex to the urban and infra-urban (block) scalesfor assessment of urban heat island, precipitation and air quality local projections.
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Urban planning adaptation strategies are evaluated according to a wide range of impactssuch as Urban Heat Island, Thermal Confort, sliperness, economic impacts,….
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Urban Climate Services are developed.A smart visualization tool is used to co-construct services rendering and analysis.

About
What is the URCLIM project about?
URCLIM project develops a general methodology to produce integrated Urban Climate Services for urban planners and related stakeholders, using open urban data and regional climate data, and to evaluate the uncertainties.
The project develops high resolution maps of urban parameters for climate studies, evaluates multi-criteria impacts and various types of adaptation strategies. It defines pertinent Urban Climate Services and smart visualization processes. This happens in cooperation with stakeholders. Several case studies have been chosen, each located in a different climate, influenced by different geographical features, and with a different urban history and structure.
Project workflow
Highlights
- A generic tool to produce urban morphological and buildings’ indicators from open datasets is built. Among the indicators are, at the scale of each block: building or road density, building type and use, mean height and Local Climate Zones.
- Downscaling methodologies are developed from Euro-Cordex to the urban and infra-urban (block) scales for assessment of urban heat island, precipitation and air quality local projections.
- Urban planning adaptation strategies are evaluated according to a wide range of impacts such as Urban Heat Island, Thermal Confort, sliperness, economic impacts,….
Urban Climate Services are developed. A smart visualization too is used to co-construct services rendering and analysis.
Keywords / hashtags
Keywords: urban heat island ; downscaling methods ; air quality ; urban maps ; adaptation scenario to climate change; climate service
Hashtag: #UrbanClimateServices ; #HealthyUrbanLiving ; #integratedUrbanModelling
Potential societal impacts
The URCLIM project provides major advances on Climate Services for urban end users, especially urban planners and city administrations. The services provide pertinent climate information on a multitude of impacts and risks. This approach enables further deployment for cities (at least in Europe), because:
- the urban description tools are based on open data
- the climate input data is based on the World Climate Research Program Euro-Cordex
- the methodologies are open-access, and the technical developments are open-source
- a smart visualization tool is associated to the Urban Climate Services
- the Urban Climate Services are developed in common with stakeholders supported by case studies.
All the partners collaborate on the quantification of various impacts and the design of the Urban Climate Services. Each partner is in relation with local stakeholders in each case study of the project: Brussels and Ghent in Belgium, Paris and Toulouse in France, the Randstad cities (Utrecht, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and The Hague), Helsinki in Finland and Bucarest in Romania.
The project consortium during the 2nd General Assembly in Toulouse (Sept 2018)
The project consortium and stakeholders during the 3rd General Assembly in Helsinki (May 2019)
The role of JPI Climate
The URCLIM project has not yet in particular sought specific assistance from JPI Climate. However, URCLIM is directly benefitting from JPI Climates efforts in terms of promoting climate services and its related projects. Especially, the climate services market event during the ERA4CS kick-off meeting in November 2017 in Brussels, jointly organised with the EC/EASME, was truly useful. URCLIM will seek more cooperation with JPI Climate regarding climate service portals.
Project leader
I am Valéry Masson, (PhD, valery.masson@meteo.fr) a senior researcher in meteorology and head of the urban climate research team of CNRM. I started to study urban climate in the late 1990s, developed the urban climate model Town energy Balance (TEB), and designed or participated in various field experiments in cities. I particularly enjoy interdisciplinary research with sociologists, architects, economists, lawyers, urban planners, hydrologists, geographers, and even meteorologists!
Project consortium
Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute
Finnish Meteorological Institute
Meteo-France
The Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium
Meteo Romania
The National Institute of Geographic and Forest Information
Five of the total seven project partners are Meteorological institutes: METEO-FRANCE (coordinator), Royal, Meteorological Institute (RMI) of Belgium, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute KNMI from the Netherlands, Meteo-RO from Romania and the Finish Meteorological Institute (FMI) from Finland. All meteorological partners develop, with the TEB urban model, downscaling methods with the high resolution (kilometer-scale) urbanized climate model. The development as well as the evaluation of the different sources of uncertainties were dispatched among the partners.
Methods to produce high-resolution urban maps for the urban climate models are developed by the 2 other partners: the geomatician researchers of the Lab-STICC laboratory of CNRS, and the French mapping agency: IGN.
Documents
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News & Events
Parent programme
ERA4CS
European Research Area for Climate Services
ERA-NET Cofund for Climate Services - This ERA-NET Consortium has been designed to boost the development of efficient Climate Services in Europe, by supporting research for developing better tools, methods and standards on how to produce, transfer, communicate and use reliable climate information to cope with current and future climate variability.
19
countries
130
partners
26
projects

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