Another part of our research focuses on building a global database of form and function of cities. Understanding complex meso- and micro-scale thermal and dynamic urban canopy processes requires knowledge on internal structure, materials and functions of cities, which is often missing or incomplete. A method to quickly derive much information about the urban structure is local climate zone mapping, developed in the open software SAGA and expanded to Google's Earth Engine. The resulting datasets have successfully been applied in different neighbourhood- and meso-scale energy balance and weather/climate models such as TARGET, SUEWS, WRF and COSMO-CLM, allowing us to better quantify and understand the impact (interaction) of (between) external parameter settings and model formulations on the modeled urban energy balance components.

The third focus is observation of air pollution and urban environments by crowdsourcing and urban climate informatics. As urban regions face multiple environmental challenges, sufficient data is the key for a good analysis of the quality of life and health. While official station networks exist for relevant stressors (air pollution, noise, weather), their spatiotemporal variance hinders sufficient observation. Mobile methods enable better spatial coverage, whereby the number of sensors and thus simultaneous measurements are still limited. Crowdsourcing, in combination with big data sources and artificial intelligence, is an interesting addition to this approach and has great potential for urban climatology.

The integration of scientific findings into urban development and planning practice is another important aspect of our research. Existing planning procedures lack both innovative approaches and adequate knowledge to integrate effective climate change adaptation measures into planning and construction practice. The impacts of climate change give a special importance to adaptation measures in order to ensure that all regions in Europe are becoming more resilient. The practical implementation of adaptation measures mainly takes place at the regional and local levels, particularly in urban environments. In that respect our focus lays on working with responsible planners, architects, politically and economically important decision makers as well as other planning and process relevant professionals.