Mobile Urban Micrometeorological Monitoring (MUMiM)

To understand the urban environment from a meteorological perspective in order to design better and more sustainable neighbourhoods, an open-source and low-cost meteorological device was developed and tested at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). The results underlined, for example, strong temperature gradients on the campus, particularly in built-up areas with a high density of artificial surfaces. Additionally, the outdoor human comfort was evaluated for multiple locations around the campus, underlying the impact of the urban surfaces as well as the city interface and the greening design. Such studies can be seen as crucial to provide information to stakeholders in the evaluation of their planning strategies either for mitigation (such as decrease of the urban heat island effect or greenhouse gas emissions) or for the adaptation (such as improvement of outdoor spaces to face future heat waves). (paper)