Special sessions
SS1. Urban underground climate and sustainable development
Chair: Asal Bidarmaghz, UNSW Sydney, Australia, [email protected]
This session will present the latest in urban underground research, including modelling and monitoring techniques within urban areas. Topics include 1) urban subsurface anthropogenic heat fluxes 2) urban aquifers and hydrology 3) geothermal potential in built environments.
SS2. A decade of WUDAPT: A session in honour of Johannes Feddema
Chair: Gerald Mills, UC Dublin, Ireland, [email protected]
The World Urban Database and Access Portal Tool project (WUDAPT) objective is to acquire, store and share urban data. This session will provide an up-to-date evaluation of the WUDAPT project including 1) the status of coverage 2) the tools to obtain urban data and 3) the application of these data in observing and modelling environments.
SS3. Infectious disease transmission and urban climate: COVID-19 and beyond
Chair: Vincent Luo, Cardiff University, United Kingdom, [email protected]
The design of the urban space, outdoor human behaviour and urban climate all have an impact on the transmission of infectious disease pathogens. The proposed session aims to understand how infectious diseases e.g., SARS-CoV-2, or vector-borne diseases transmit in urban areas, and what is the role that urban climate and urban design could play in the transmission.
SS4. Mutual effects of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown measures and urban climate
Chairs: Gloria Pignatta, UNSW Sydney, Australia, [email protected]
Prof. Umberto Berardi, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada [email protected]
What have been the effects of COVID-19 measures on the local outdoor microclimate? What are the effects of changes in the quality of the urban environment, energy consumptions, greenhouse gas emissions on the urban climate? An interdisciplinary exploration and discussion on the mutual impacts that exist between COVID-19 and urban climate are the focus of this session.
SS5. Nature-based solutions for sustainable, resilient and livable cities
Chair: Dragan D. Milosevic, University of Novi Sad, Serbia, [email protected]
The UN`s Sustainable Development Agenda put the spotlight on the importance of implementing nature-based solutions to solve environmental, social and economic challenges in a sustainable manner. This session is dedicated to basic and applied research related to the implementation of nature-based solutions in urban areas.
SS6. Urban heat mitigation: observations, numerical modeling and integrated assessment methods
Chair: Lei Zhao, University of Illinois, United States, [email protected]
This session invites submissions of conceptual, observational, modelling, and data-driven research related to urban heat mitigation strategies and related physical and chemical processes under current and future warmer climates. Studies relevant to environmental, socioeconomic and health impacts, as well as those applying integrated assessment methods, are also welcome.
SS7. Extreme weather and climate in urban areas, their social impacts, and mitigation
Chair: Ashish Sharma, University of Illinois, United States, [email protected]
Using integrating analysis, measurement, and modeling tools, this session seeks contributions to advance our understanding of 1) extreme weather and climate processes in urban areas; 2) societal impacts of weather and climate extremes; 3) mitigation and adaptation strategies to future change in weather extremes for cities.
SS8. Exploring co-benefits of integrated low-carbon urban planning initiatives
Chair: Jenny Salmond, University of Auckland, New Zealand, [email protected]
Transformative planning strategies are required if we are to sustainably mitigate the health and socio-economic impacts of environmental change in cities. This session invites papers which explore the interface between urban climate research, policy and practice and the efficacy of urban interventions designed to mitigate the consequences of urbanisation and environmental change.
SS9. Energy and water supply facing compound crises
Chair: Riccardo Paolini, UNSW Sydney, Australia, [email protected]
This session invites contributions focussing on the forecast, management, and crisis management in consideration of extreme climate events, also in synergy with other events or specific conditions. This includes for instance the combination of heatwave and bushfire events in a drought context, or energy supply issues due to geopolitical events and cold snaps.
SS10. Local government and urban climate management
Chair: Riccardo Paolini, UNSW Sydney, Australia, [email protected]
The session invites contributions on the establishment, management, and use of networks of urban sensors for forecasting and monitoring extreme climate events. This also includes urban informatics approaches for data management and processing, to assist local governments and citizens in facing extreme events and compound crises.
SS11. Multi-physics urban climate modelling
Chairs: Chao Yuan, NUS, Singapore, [email protected] & Professor Jian Hang, Sun Yat-Sen University, China
Urban climate is complex, with dynamic interactions of many relevant processes across scales. This session welcomes numerical simulations, scaled experiments (wind tunnel or water tank tests), full-scale outdoor field measurements and theoretical modelling to better our understanding of the relative significance and influencing mechanisms of multi-physics factors on urban climate modelling.
SS12. Urban climate and air pollution
Chairs: Melissa Hart, University of New South Wales, Sydney [email protected] and Qihong Deng [email protected]
This session will focus on the interaction between ambient air pollution, urban climate and climate change in our cities. Studies that explore the seminal role that our cities could take to help, rather than harm, inhabitants’ health and well-being through supportive and forward thinking integrated urban design are encouraged.
SS13. Sustainable development, urban policies and climate actions in Asia
Chair: Shreya Banerjee, Singapore Management University, Singapore, [email protected]
This session intends to explore the impact of various development-related urban policies on urban climate actions for Asian cities. This calls for an interdisciplinary approach combining urban planning, public policy, climate justice, improving quality of life, poverty alleviation, clean and green energy use, and public health issues.
SS14. Small and Medium Sized Cities (SMSC) - Why they should be climate informed, resilient and sustainable?
Chair: Chandana Mitra, Auburn University, [email protected]
Small and medium-sized cities (SMSC) have grown at a faster rate than major cities over the last decade. Having a lower adaptive capacity, however, increasing extreme weather leaves SMSC ill-equipped to effectively respond while urban climate literature has mainly focused on the growth and dynamics of large and megacities. This session will focus on critical questions - Do SMSC have the necessary infrastructure and readiness to adapt and address climate variability with future climate change in mind? What can be done to make existing, as well as future SMSC more sustainable?
SS15. The cooling benefits of blue and green infrastructure in cities
Chair: Stephen Livesley University of Melbourne, [email protected]
There are now many strategic plans to better adapt our towns and cities to global warming and heat events through the integration of blue and green infrastructure. This session will explore the evidence for localised cooling benefits and the combined suburb or city-scale cooling benefits from blue and green infrastructure. Priority will be given to presentations that report evidence of air temperature cooling through measurement or modelling.
SS16. Local climate impacts of urban street trees: advances in modelling and measurement
Chair: Scott Krayenhoff, University of Guelph [email protected]
Street trees, being biological systems embedded in complex, constructed surroundings, have myriad effects on local climate and the local environment more broadly. They impact air temperature via multiple mechanisms, and additionally affect street canopy airflow, dispersion, humidity and the near-surface radiation environment. This session welcomes submissions that develop, test or apply advanced models and simulations of urban street tree impacts. Furthermore, this session invites submissions that quantify trade-offs and co-benefits between different local environmental outcomes as a result of street tree planting.
SS17. Climate change, Built Environment and Aging Society
Chair: Edward Ng, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, [email protected] &
Chao Ren, The University of Hong Kong, [email protected]
Extreme weather events increase their corresponding impact on health under future climate change. This problem is exacerbated due to the ageing population and increasing urbanisation. This session will introduce a methodological framework to translate urban climatic knowledge of extreme heat weather events to improve the built environment and support services for senior citizens.
SS18. GHG emissions information to support urban mitigation policy
Chair: Zoe Loh, CSIRO, [email protected]
Detailed knowledge of urban greenhouse gas emissions as well as urban carbon sinks will play an integral role in mitigation of urban emissions, through urban design, planning and policies. This session will be dedicated to methods of providing greenhouse gas information that can support policy and mitigation at the urban scale.
SS19. Urban data for climate modelling and sustainable cities
Chairs: Filip Biljecki, National University of Singapore, Singapore [email protected]
Mathew Lipson, Bureau of Meteorology, Australia [email protected]
Urban data is an essential ingredient for urban climate studies and a key pillar in the emerging field of urban climate informatics. The goal of this session is to provide a platform for data-specific topics, such as, but not limited to: (1) How emerging forms of data such as street view imagery and three-dimensional building-resolving models / digital twins can be further leveraged to support climate modelling; (2) recent developments in geospatial technologies to support liveable and sustainable cities; (3) issues and challenges in data acquisition, data quality, harmonisation, and interoperability; and (4) the outlook on digital twins.
SS20. Special session in honour of Bob Bornstein
Chairs: Filip Jorge Gonzalez-Cruz, University of Albany, New York, United States of America [email protected]
Dev Niyogi, The University of Texas at Austin Facility, Texas, United States of America [email protected]
Workshop sessions
Coming soon.
