Evaluation of Absolute Maximum Urban Heat Island Intensity Based on a Simplified Remote Sensing Approach

The Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon can be harmful during the summer season jeopardizing the safety of some vulnerable population classes. Typically, the study of the UHI requires long data acquisitions using weather stations widely distributed within the cities. To this aim, recent research proposed multicriteria approaches aimed at quantifying the hazard of the summer absolute maximum Urban Heat Island Intensity (UHII), in urban districts. On the contrary, these approaches are time consuming and involve a large number of parameters. This article proposes a simplified multiparametric approach based on the three principal parameters involved in the UHI (albedo, greenery, and anthropogenic heat) obtained by a refined remote sensing data acquisition. In comparison with other approaches, the proposed method is simpler and quick to apply while maintaining good precision. Moreover, a calibration is achieved by exploiting the real absolute max UHII of a set of 41 European urban districts and a validation is obtained by a comparison with another multiparametric approach already validated in literature. Both the approaches are applied to 96 urban districts of Berlin. The results show that the simplified procedure keep an average error less than 1°C but improving in applicability.