URCLIM

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.