Thermal evaluation of the local climate zone scheme in Belgium

Global warming and the increasing world population will only put more pressure on the living conditions in urban environments. From a thermal comfort point of view, it is clear that there is a need for sustainable urban planning in which the thermal behavior of new developments can be accounted for. Mapping the city into local climate zones (LCZs), with unique air temperature regimes, could be a useful tool supporting urban planners in their decision making. The LCZ scheme is currently being used to globally map LCZs as a part of the World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools (WUDAPT) initiative. In this paper we evaluate the thermal behavior of LCZs for three Belgian cities, Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent, based on modelled air temperature. Preliminary results show similarities for the thermal behavior of the built zones which can point at the generic applicability of the LCZ scheme, even in old European cities characterized by heterogeneous urban morphologies at small horizontal scales.