WUDAPT: An Urban Weather, Climate, and Environmental Modeling Infrastructure for the Anthropocene

Abstract

The World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools (WUDAPT) is an international community-based initiative to acquire and disseminate climate relevant data on the physical geographies of cities for modeling and analysis purposes. The current lacuna of globally consistent information on cities is a major impediment to urban climate science toward informing and developing climate mitigation and adaptation strategies at urban scales. WUDAPT consists of a database and a portal system; its database is structured into a hierarchy representing different levels of detail, and the data are acquired using innovative protocols that utilize crowdsourcing approaches, Geowiki tools, freely accessible data, and building typology archetypes. The base level of information (L0) consists of local climate zone (LCZ) maps of cities; each LCZ category is associated with a range of values for model-relevant surface descriptors (roughness, impervious surface cover, roof area, building heights, etc.). Levels 1 (L1) and 2 (L2) will provide specific intra-urban values for other relevant descriptors at greater precision, such as data morphological forms, material composition data, and energy usage. This article describes the status of the WUDAPT project and demonstrates its potential value using observations and models. As a community-based project, other researchers are encouraged to participate to help create a global urban database of value to urban climate scientists.

How well does the local climate zone scheme discern the thermal environment of Toulouse (France)? An analysis using numerical simulation data

“…Moving forwards, this urban climatic analysis approach could be applied to other cities in France, or it could even be extended to cities with LCZs mapped around the world, thanks to the World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools initiative (Ching et al, ). Further work should also explore how urban climatic analysis results could be incorporated into larger urban planning frameworks alongside other considerations, such as demographics, urban development, energy use, public health, economic activities, and transport infrastructure.…”

High‐Resolution, Multilayer Modeling of Singapore's Urban Climate Incorporating Local Climate Zones

“…The LCZ are derived using Landsat data, geographical information system (GIS) software, and knowledge of the urban experts. A WUDAPT committee verifies the quality of the data and whether it accurately depicts the urban landscape (Ching et al, ). The WUDAPT methodology incorporating L0 data in WRF has introduced a standardized scientific way to describe the land cover and its thermal performance on the UHI in many studies (Brousse et al, ; Cai et al, ; Hammerberg et al, ; Ren et al, ; R. Wang et al, ).…”

Implications of employing detailed urban canopy parameters for mesoscale climate modelling: a comparison between WUDAPT and GIS databases over Vienna, Austria

“…To bridge this knowledge and data gap on urban structures, the World Urban Database and Access Portal Tool (WUDAPT) project (Ching et al ., , ; Mills et al ., ), currently at a stage of development defined as Level 0, started mapping urban areas using the local climate zones (LCZ) classification schema. LCZs are defined as areas with relatively homogenous surface cover, materials, morphology and human activity.…”