Calculation and Expression of the Urban Heat Island Indices Based on GeoSOT Grid

Abstract

The urban heat island (UHI) effect accelerates the accumulation of atmospheric pollutants, which has a strong impact on the climate of cities, circulation of material, and health of citizens. Therefore, it is of great significance to conduct quantitative monitoring and accurate governance of UHI by calculating the index rapidly and expressing spatial distribution accurately. In this paper, we proposed a model that integrates UHI information with the GeoSOT (Geographic Coordinate Subdividing Grid with One-Dimension Integer Coding on 2n Tree) grid and subsequently designed the calculation method of UHI indices and expression method of UHI spatial distribution. The UHI indices were calculated on Dongcheng and Xicheng District, Beijing, in the Summer of 2014 to 2019. Experimental results showed that the proposed method has higher calculation efficiency, and achieved a more detailed description of the spatial distribution of the urban thermal environment compared with the Gaussian surface fitting method. This method can be used for large-scale and high-frequency monitoring the level of UHI and expressing complicated spatial distribution of UHI inside the city, thus supporting accurate governance of UHI.