ABSTRACT
The LCZ classification system offers important metadata – both quantitative and qualitative – to planning and mapping projects that use climatopes and UCMapping techniques. Urban planners and climatologists have suggested that consistent input data are needed to improve the integrity of these projects (e.g. Wilmers, 1991; Scherer et al., 1999). UCMapping follows a layered approach to build its database of spatial information, ultimately to produce analytical and recommendation maps for local planners. These layers ordinarily include air temperature, airflow, land use, land cover, building structure, surface relief, and population density. The layers are quantified and then stacked across local areas to reveal ‘climates of special places’, or ‘climatopes.’ Additional information to increase the number of layers in an urban climatic map (UCMap), and to improve consistency in the definition of these layers, is available in the metadata accompanying each LCZ class.
