Urban Heat Stress Determination for Enschede
A link is present with the topic “Urban Climate Observation over Enschede”, such that co-operation with the fellow student is possible, although there is no such necessity.
Climate change is nowadays prominently present on the political and thus scientific agenda, which is reflected in the Dutch Delta-Programme for Spatial Adaptation (“Delta-Programma Ruimtelijke Adaptatie – DPRA”) in which an important tool is the so-called stresstest. These stresstests, which analyze the risks for extreme precipitation, heatstress, drought and flooding, need to be implemented by all Dutch Townships in 2019. The heatstress-test, which is relatively new and partly still under development, utilizes indicators such as the maximum Urban Heat Index (Theeuwes et al., 2017) and the Physiological Equivalent Temperature (Matzarakis et al., 2010) for spatial mapping.
The WRS department of ITC faculty has developed urban climate observation tower sites and, in cooperation with the Creative Technology group at the EWI faculty, the City Council of Enschede and the Regional Water Authority “Vechtstromen”, a climate observation sensor network, which are used for monitoring the drivers and characteristics of the urban heat. You will be working on the development of the heatstress-test, involving the implementation, analysis and evaluation for Enschede
The methodology proposed in this MSc research topic: You will be modelling heatstress for Enschede not only spatially but also temporally, utilizing observations made during the extremely hot and dry 2018 summer. Analyses include model-performance versus observations, effects of urban morphology, vegetation and meteorology as well as anthropogenic influences. You will indicate potential problem areas and propose potential prevention measures. No specific fieldwork, other than interviews with citizens (M-SE), is envisaged. Naturally, (work) visits the city local authorities and observation sites are an integral part of the research.
Matzarakis A., Rutz F. & Mayer H. (2010) Modelling radiation fluxes in simple and complex environments: basics of the RayMan model. Int. J. Biometeorol. 54, 131-139. doi: 10.1007/s00484-009-0261-0
Theeuwes N. E., Steeneveld G.-J., Ronda R. J. & Holtslag A. A. M. (2017) A diagnostic equation for the daily maximum urban heat island effect for cities in northwestern Europe. International Journal of Climatology 37, 443-454. doi:10.1002/joc.4717
Possibility (to adapt the topic to) for M-SE requirements (multidisciplinary ): The topic in itself is already multi-disciplinary, however, Spatial Engineering students may in addition analyse how the resulting heatstress-maps compare versus citizen experiences (In fact quite a number of complaints were received by the local authorities during the 2018 summer) and how potential prevention measures would affect these experiences.