Project Details
Overview
 
 
 
Project description 

Due to climate change, extreme weather events such as heat waves are becoming increasingly frequent. During summer, this can lead to elevated temperatures during the day and especially at night in cities compared to rural areas (urban heat island effect). This increase in temperature and heat stress also correlates with cardiovascular diseases and excess mortality, among other issues. The major challenge here is to make adaptations in cities to counteract the increased heat stress, for example by planning more green spaces in urban areas (climate adaptation). In this project, visitors can use LEGO blocks to interactively investigate the impact of a city`s geomorphology and land use on temperature (and heat stress) in the city. Visitors will build a miniature city using LEGO blocks, with a color code provided for land use. Subsequently, a photo will be taken of this setup, and using a script, this photo will be converted into a map containing information about land use and the structural characteristics of this city. Then, this obtained map will be used with a program based on machine learning methods to predict the hyperlocal temperature for this LEGO city. Furthermore, we will establish links to other research domains relevant to this project, such as citizen science and crowd-sourced data, artificial intelligence, and the effect of heat and environmental factors on human health (environmental health).

Runtime: 2023 - 2023