The World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools project is a bottom-up initiative to collect data on the form and function of cities around the world.

An international community-based effort.

The impact of cities on the climate at urban, regional and global scales is a topic of considerable debate. Much of the relevant research to date has been focused on mapping urban centers using demographic and administrative information, often supplemented by remote sensing. However, these data provide no information on the internal make-up of cities, which is important for understanding their impact on the environment as well as their vulnerability to change. The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) notes the dearth of information on urban areas. The goals of WUDAPT are

• to acquire and make accessible coherent and consistent descriptions and information on form and function of urban morphology relevant to climate, weather, and environment studies on a worldwide basis and
• to provide a portal with tools that extract relevant urban parameters and properties for models and for model applications at appropriate scales for various climate, weather, environment, and urban planning purposes.

Its guiding principle is to generate “fit for purpose” urban data using a globally consistent methodology using available, publicly accessible input data and tools. Products created from this process are shared across multiple communities and platform.