Supervisors:
- Annette Hirsch ( a.hirsch@unsw.edu.au )
- Melissa Hart ( melissa.hart@unsw.edu.au )
- Jason Evans ( jason.evans@unsw.edu.au )
Location: can be ANU or UNSW based
Time: available over the summer or p/t through the academic year
Land-use modifications due to urbanisation can modify the energy balance in cities; this, in turn, affects the urban thermal environment, resulting in the urban heat island (UHI) effect, whereby urban areas often experience different temperatures than surrounding rural areas.
These land-use modifications vary across a city and it is important to capture this spatial variability when representing the urban environment in climate models.
This project will use the World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools (WUDAPT) to classify land-use of Australian metropolitan regions and surrounds. The student will critically review the WUDAPT method as compared to other land-use classification methods, both in urban and non-urban areas.
Completed urban land-use classifications will be uploaded to the WUDAPT database and the student will be asked to provide a detailed assessment of Australian urban land-use compared to cities with similar characteristics in the WUDAPT database.