11The recently developed Local Climate Zones (LCZ) classification system was not originally designed for mapping, but 12 to classify and standardize urban heat island observation sites. Nevertheless, if the aim is to characterize the areas with 13 different thermal reactions within a wider study area, the mapping seems to be a useful application of the system. 14 Our objectives are: (i) to develop GIS methods to calculate different parameters describing the LCZs for any part of the 15 study area, (ii) to identify and delineate the LCZ types occuring in the study area using the calculated parameters, (iii) to 16 select representative sites of an urban monitoring network using the mapped LCZs and modelled mean annual 17 temperature surplus pattern. 18The input data were: 3D building, road and Corine Land Cover databases, aerial photographs, topographic map and 19RapidEye satellite image. The basic area of calculation was the building block with the area belonging to (polygon). 20These polygons classified with the same or similar parameter values were aggregated to evolve the appropriate size 21 zones. As a result, six built LCZ types were distinguished in the studied urban area. 22

The World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools (WUDAPT) project has grown out of the need for better information on the form and function of cities globally. Cities are described using Local Climate Zones (LCZ), which are associated with a range of key urban climate model parameters and thus can serve as inputs to high resolution urban climate models. We refer to this as level 0 data for each city. The LCZ level 0 product is produced using freely available Landsat imagery, crowdsourced training areas from the community, and the open source SAGA software. This paper outlines the protocol by which LCZ maps generated by different members of the community are produced and evaluated. In particular, the quality assessment comprises cross-validation, review, and cross-comparison with other data sets. To date, the results from the different quality assessments show that the LCZ maps are generally of moderate quality, i.e. 50-60% overall

We analyse the average annual and seasonal air temperature conditions in the ‘local climate zones’ (LCZs) of Szeged, Hungary. The basis of our analysis is a 1‐year dataset from 2014 to 2015 for a 20‐station urban meteorological network. The network and its corresponding LCZ classes put temperature studies in Szeged into a new spatial framework to assess local climate and urban heat island (UHI) conditions. The stations were installed at locally representative sites using a Geographic Information System (GIS) method based on the standard surface parameters of the LCZ classification. The network was purposely designed to monitor thermal differences among LCZ classes in Szeged. We provide detailed site metadata for each of the monitoring stations used in the analysis. Our results show that the densely built‐up LCZ classes have higher annual and monthly mean and minimum air temperatures than structurally open and more vegetated classes, with nocturnal differences of >4 °C observed under calm, clear skies. Among select temperature indices measured in the urban LCZ classes, frost days, cooling degree‐days, and tropical nights differ markedly from the background rural LCZ classes. This difference suggests that local climatologies exist within Szeged, and that these have implications for thermal comfort, urban energy use, and urban agriculture. Finally, the evaluation of heating and cooling rates in Szeged shows an important role for LCZs in UHI analysis.

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