Urbane Hitze­karten, hochauf­gelöst

The high-resolution heat maps are created using machine learning by combining satellite data with freely available adminis­trative data and measu­re­ments from private weather stations.

Cities are parti­cu­larly vulnerable to extreme heat. Therefore, under­standing tempe­rature distri­bution in urban areas is parti­cu­larly important and affects many areas – from archi­tecture to urban planning to public health.

The heat maps with a resolution of 10x10 meters enable a wide range of analyses:

• Bench­marking: How severely is a parti­cular location affected by heat compared to the city as a whole or compared to Switz­erland?
• Vulnerability analyses: Who is affected by climate change and to what extent? These analyses can relate to the population (e.g., by age or by socioe­co­nomic factors such as income) or to the building stock (e.g., by year of construction or by use).
• Cooling effects: Analysis of the cooling effect of green spaces.
• Conflicting goals: Which conflicting goals (e.g. regarding densi­fi­cation) can occur?
• Projec­tions: Climate models can be used to estimate future heat stress. Heat map for the city of Zurich. Around 600 tempe­rature sensors serve as the basis.

Heat map for the city of Zurich. Around 600 tempe­rature sensors serve as the basis.

Urban greening as a measure against the heat