Towards a global database on building architecture and construction materials for urban climate models

Abstract. Due to regional climate change exacerbated by the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, the population of dense urban areas is vulnerable to heat stress. Accurate urban climate models are essential for quantifying UHI mitigation strategies and supporting climate adaptation efforts. These models require input data on urban form, materials, and function. However, existing frameworks, such as Local Climate Zones (LCZ) and Geoclimate, only provide urban morphological parameters and lack detailed information on building materials and systems.

To address these limitations, architects, engineers, urban climatologists and researchers in many countries have been contacted via a survey platform to provide information on building materials and systems. The survey has been translated into 11 languages to enable global coverage. This approach captures significant architectural and construction trends by collecting key data on building systems and envelope characteristics (e.g., walls, roofs, windows, and insulation).

The survey yielded 521 responses from 141 countries, demonstrating substantial global coverage. A multi-step imputation strategy was applied to create a comprehensive global database, and residential building typologies are defined for each country. Global homogeneous typologies are defined for non-residential buildings. The resulting datasets are freely available and can easily be combined with LCZ maps. These datasets provide a valuable resource for urban climate modeling and facilitate more accurate climate assessments on a global scale. Future work may enhance data granularity further, for instance, by providing typologies at the subnational level.