Presentation and second place in the Best Short Paper Competition at AGILE 2024

Both the degree of urbanisation and climate change are continuing to accelerate. As a result, heat islands in cities are an increasing problem. In a collaborative paper (with Florian Klopfer from our neighbouring landscape planning group) presented at the AGILE 2024 Conference in Glasgow, we analyse a dataset of land surface temperatures in Berlin. The heat information is not mapped on administrative or census units, but summarised into so-called urban structure type units. These are not only meaningful in terms of their inherent link to urban heat but also represent a geography that is relevant for planning purposes. Our analysis complements existing studies in Berlin by applying two novel visual spatial analysis methods: the Moran drop plot and the Moran seismogram, both of which were introduced in a contribution to the GISRUK Conference earlier this year. These plots allow structures to be visually explored that are not found in traditional Moran scatterplots. In this way, we can visualise that low-temperature areas tend to be more homogeneously clustered than their high-temperature counterparts. In turn, the latter can be identified in the plots as clearly smaller in geographic scale and thus as more heterogeneous in the neighbourhoods formed. Finally, we draw conclusions including possible policy-relevant considerations. We are very happy that our work has also made it to the second place at the Best Short Paper Competition, and we are grateful to everyone who voted for our paper!

Westerholt, R., Klopfer, F. (2024): Studying the spatial structure of urban heat exposure in Berlin utilising Moran drop plots and seismograms. Proceedings of the 27th AGILE International Conference on Geographic Information Science (AGILE 2024), Glasgow, UK. DOI: 10.5194/agile-giss-5-52-2024.

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