A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON THERMAL ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE OF THE URBAN FORM PROTOTYPES BASED ON LOCAL CLIMATE ZONE (LCZ) SCHEME

Abstract

The local climate zones (LCZ) classification was introduced by Stewart and Oke to standardize climatic observations. It aims at linking the different land cover patterns to their corresponding thermal properties directly from the perspective of urban geography. Yet the classification needs further development when it is applied into local urban form studies. The World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools (WUDAPT) strives to produce a global shared database capturing information on urban form and function for climate applications. Chengdu has been chosen as one of the testbeds around the world for WUDAPT level 1 and level 2 development. This article tries to develop the urban form typology study from the perspective of urban climatology, and to integrate the scheme of “local climate zones (LCZ)” landscape classification and “urban form typology”. It takes Chengdu as the testbed in hot-summer and cold-winter area. Firstly, based on the survey of the actual urban form, it extracts and purifies the theoretical prototypes of LCZ1 ~ 6. Based on the numerical simulation model “ENVI-met”, it compares the outdoor thermal performance of different LCZ theoretical prototypes in winter, it validates the applicability of LCZ theory in Chengdu and it has found that the result rules are basically consistent with the LCZ assumptions in the hot summer and cold winter areas. Finally, it proposes a research paradigm for the application of urban form typology to the further development of (LCZ) scheme.