Visual Analytics for Urban Heat Risk Assessment: A Scenario-Driven Dashboard for Exploring Microclimate Development

Vuckovic, Milena and Schmidt, Johanna (2025) Visual Analytics for Urban Heat Risk Assessment: A Scenario-Driven Dashboard for Exploring Microclimate Development. URBAN INNOVATION: TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO CITIES HAVE GONE BEFORE. Medium sized cities and towns as a major arena of global urbanisation. Proceedings of REAL CORP 2025, 30th Intl. Conference on Urban Development, Regional Planning and Information Society. pp. 1007-1014. ISSN 2521-3938

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Abstract

Given the ongoing dynamics of climate change and its adverse impacts, improving communication about climate exposure and risk in urban areas has become more critical than ever. To advance these efforts, we present an innovative digital platform that enables stakeholders to intuitively visualize, analyze, and respond to complex microclimate developments effectively. Specifically, we present a web-based, scenario-driven visual analytics dashboard designed to visualize and explore complex spatio-temporal microclimate dynamics in an engaging and accessible way. The dashboard integrates several key features, including detailed spatial and temporal heat mapping, heat hazard identification, and the evaluation of potential mitigation strategies, such as nature-based solutions and urban shading interventions. The user interface offers multiple linked views, including geographic maps, aggregated visualizations (e.g., histograms), and views showing temporal changes (e.g., line charts). These visualizations are interconnected and highly responsive, whereby actions in one view immediately affect the others. A number of public demonstrations were conducted with a diverse group of stakeholders (e.g., policy-makers, urban planners, government representatives, scientific and industry partners, students) to assess the effectiveness of our dashboard in identifying priority areas that require immediate intervention. These sessions aimed to evaluate how well the dashboard supports users in recognizing high-risk zones and understanding the dynamics of heat exposure within urban environments. These demonstrations provided valuable insights into the dashboard’s ability to guide users through complex datasets, while enhancing the communication of heat risks and supporting the consideration of targeted strategies to mitigate the impacts of extreme heat in urban environments.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	microclimate development, climate risk assessment, climate simulation, visual analytics, decision support system
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences J Political Science > JS Local government Municipal government
Depositing User:	The CORP Team
Date Deposited:	24 May 2025 11:54
Last Modified:	07 Jul 2025 11:08
URI:	http://repository.corp.at/id/eprint/1209

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