Feasibility Study on Integrating Public Transport Vehicles for Heat Mapping Purposes

The urban heat island (UHI) has been characterized for numerous cities in numerical as well as observational studies. One of the standard approaches is to compare temperature data of one or several rural stations against an urban station. Since cities are segmented into different local climate zones, each having distinct climatic characteristics, the term urban heat archipelago was suggested before. This term seems more appropriate since it implicates an intra-urban variety of different thermal environments. To characterize urban-rural and intra-urban temperature differences, mobile transect measurements are a common approach. These studies are mostly based on a few number of transects, conducted under weather conditions that promote the formation of the UHI. In this study, we partnered with the public transport agency of Phoenix, Valley Metro and installed temperature sensors on bus roofs. The buses are driving on different routes in Tempe, Scottsdale, Mesa and Phoenix, thereby continuously collecting data since June 1^st 2018 for a variety of different urban areas. The considerations concerning the housing design and sensor type and the results of different spatial interpolation algorithms to characterize an intra-urban heat archipelago within the Phoenix metropolitan area will be presented.