Local Climate Zones (LCZs) and Urban Morphological Parameters Using GIS: An Application to Italian Cities

LCZs refer to a classification system that exists out of 17 classes, 10 of which can be described as urban, proposed as the new standard for characterizing and comparing urban landscapes. This study evaluates the reliability of the LCZ level 0 map obtained from WUDAPT by comparing it with a more detailed LCZ map inferred from the morphological information of several Italian cities. Morphological data from Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) are used to obtain a detailed morphological characterization of each city. Preliminary results for the city of Lecce show that the WUDAPT L0 method misclassified some LCZs, especially at the core urban cells, whereas wider matching is observed at the boundary between urban and rural areas