A web-based tool for supporting USM in Heraklion

Studying the urban climate at local scale is becoming a necessity in the era of intensified urbanization and climate change. Urban Surface Models (USMs) show great potential in this direction, as they provide crucial information, such as energy fluxes and near-surface meteorological parameters; however, they are usually implemented offline and not in a real-time manner. In this paper, we build upon a well-known USM, the Surface Urban Energy and Water Balance Scheme (SUEWS) and present the development of a web-based application, as a real-time monitoring service for the city of Heraklion, Greece. Earth Observation products are used to provide the spatial inputs required by the model and a network of ground weather stations is used to provide the necessary forcing data. Using the above, the model provides high spatial and temporal resolution city-wide outputs of heat fluxes and near-surface meteorological conditions. The energy-related outputs can provide significant insight for urban climate applications with the real-time monitoring feature enabling fast and area-specific responses to extreme events like heatwaves. Finally, the application has been set up in a transferable manner, so that its implementation to other cities can be conducted by modifying the minimum amount of model inputs.