Exploring the impact of urban morphology on heat stress: A high-resolution microclimate simulation study
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Extreme heat poses significant environmental and health risks. These risks often disproportionately affect marginalized and disenfranchised communities. Neighborhood-scale planning is essential for addressing climate change through adaptation strategies. Currently, there is a lack of long-term weather data at the neighborhood level, limiting the ability to analyze localized weather trends and compare variations across areas. This gap persists due to the challenges of collecting fine-scale local data, including significant time demands, limited resources, and potential privacy concerns. To bridge this gap, this project employs the Urban Weather Generator model to generate neighborhood-scale temperature and relative humidity data for the city of Houston. The neighborhood size is defined using a 500-by-500-m grid. Based on the comprehensive analysis of heat stress variation across these neighborhoods, we identify areas with notably higher or lower heat stress duration. This dataset is intended to inform targeted interventions in microclimate design and personal-level heat adaptation.
Authors: Cuiling Liu, Xinyue Ye, Yangyang Xu, Quan Sun, Yong Xu
Institutions: Texas A&M University, University of Alabama, University of Antwerp
Language: English
Topic: Urban Heat Island Mitigation
Subfield: Environmental Engineering
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Awards: CIVIC-FA Track A: Co-created Digital Twins for Heat-resilient Home Rehab Co-design, CIVIC-PG Track A: Create an Ethical Urban Digital Twin to Co-design Heat Mitigations for Integrated Indoor and Outdoor Environments, Excellence in Research: Implementing Urban Digital Twins with Responsible Foundation AI for Community Resilience, G4155917937
OpenAlex ID: W4415194162