Kuala Lumpur city of tomorrow: integration of geospatial urban climatic information in city planning.

Urbanization brings many benefits. However, due to rapid and uncontrollable urbanization, the urban environment has been dramatically degraded. As a developing country, Malaysia is facing urbanization processes throughout the country and most of the population have migrated to dwell in the cities. Malaysia has envisions designing smart, liveable and comfortable cities, there is a great need to maintain the sustainability of the cities to ensure that the quality of life of urban dwellers is preserved, especially in terms of the environment. This paper reviews the concept of urban climatic mapping and its potential implementation in a Malaysian urban environment. The key elements and parameters of the urban climatic mapping are also discussed. Since being introduced 40 years ago, urban climatic maps have attracted worldwide interest. It is time for Malaysia to have its own urban climatic maps to assist the decision makers to make an informed decision on the development and its impacts to the urban climate conditions in particular.. It is the responsibility of mapmakers to share lessons and experiences with city planners and policy-makers to bring new planning environments that include climate as one of the important aspects to be considered

The Development of the Vulnerability Index (VI) using Principal Component Analysis (PCA)

Climate change elevates the rate of emergence of urban heat islands (UHIs), especially in the tropics. UHIs severely affect human comfort and health. Many studies have suggested that urban areas should be properly mitigated or planned. To cope with this, it is best to present the issue using easy-to-understand approaches to allow for better decision-making, especially during urban planning. Based on the information, adaptations and mitigation strategies can be suggested in order to reduce the impact. Hence, this research was aimed at determining the heat vulnerability index (HVI) of urban areas. This study was conducted in Malaysia in the Klang Valley, a tropical city with a complex urban morphology. Remote sensing techniques were employed to extract and derive the spatial index values for exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. A principal component analysis (PCA) was used to estimate the vulnerability as well as to generate the HVI. The most vulnerable districts were found to be Petaling (1.00), Kuala Lumpur (0.99), and Putrajaya (0.95). Kuala Lumpur had a level of exposure that was high (0.56), a level of sensitivity that was high (0.84), and capacity to adapt that was low (0.54), while Petaling had a high exposure value (0.56), very high sensitivity (1), and high adaptive capacity (0.72). A Pearson’s correlation (r) test also revealed that the variables used were highly correlated. From the preliminary findings, the vulnerability of the population to high temperatures in the Klang Valley can be identified to help develop adaptative plans that are targeted as a response to rapid warming in the future in Malaysia

An exploratory study on wind speed profiling of high-rise building/monument using EnviMET.

Envi-MET is a useful tool for simulating wind speed at building heights and modelling microclimatic conditions around buildings, including wind speed around buildings and other structures. Envi-MET is used in this study to simulate wind speed toward building heights. When R2 = 0.8186, relative bias is -0.0775, and RMSE is 0.2578, the agreement between Envi-MET simulation and ground observation indicates acceptable agreement. With this establishment, it was discovered that the building's height and wind speed are not the only factors causing destruction; the less friction of wind with surface features will also increase the wind speed, as shown by the results of the vertical profile wind speed in relation to the tollway building's height. At a height of 13 metres, the wind speed is 3.5 m/s. Wind circulation affects the building at this elevation, causing damage to the roof and ceiling. Buildings and structures can sustain significant damage as a result of high wind speeds. When wind speeds are high, the wind's force increases, causing pressure differences on different sides of a building or structure. The findings of this study inform relevant parties of the impact of wind on building construction and how it may influence variations in wind speed

Land cover impacts towards thermal variation in the Kuala Lumpur City.

Physical geography and urban characteristics influence the urban climate conditions. Built-up areas, green urban parks, forest reserves, streets and terrain constitute the climatic interactions within urban areas. These have led to the variation of the urban climate condition throughout the world. Thus, in studying urban climate, the impacts of these factors are crucial to be examined. This study aims to examine the effects of six important factors, namely built-up areas, green covers, terrain elevation, building volume, surface roughness and land use type, which contribute to the variation of the urban climate condition within the Kuala Lumpur City. In this study, the effects of the six factors (urban parameters) towards the air surface temperature variation were statistically tested. Using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and the remote sensing technique, the data needed for the analyses were extracted. The Geographical Information System (GIS) was employed as the analysis platform during the study. Based on the Spearman’s rho and Mann-Whitney U tests, it was identified that the six urban parameters and the air surface temperature variation are correlated. The further investigation conducted using the Kruskall-Wallis test has identified that only five of the urban parameters showed significant effects toward the air surface temperature variation, which are built-up areas, green covers, terrain elevation, building volume and surface roughness while the land use type was excluded. The findings of this study are very crucial as a pioneer research to integrate the urban climatic information in the urban planning decision making in tropical cities like Kuala Lumpur

Impacts of Lateral Boundary Condition Resolution in Tropical Urban Climate Modelling for Kuala Lumpur

Choosing the best LBCs is still debated among researchers due to the errors resulted. However, several recommendations have been documented to control the errors propagated by LBCs. One of the recommendations is employing higher resolutions LBCs. In the present, many LBCs are developed with various resolutions; spatially and temporally, for many applications but no claims regarding the best LBCs for tropical climate modelling have yet been documented. Therefore, this study intends to analyse the impacts of lateral boundary condition resolution during numerical downscaling within a tropical city. This study serves as a site-specific investigation to determine the suitable LBCs for the focused study area. Two widely used LBCs with different resolutions were utilized to initiate the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) simulation model. The performances of the two LBCs were compared using statistical tests and analyses. The study has found that the LBC with higher resolutions excels the other LBC during inter-monsoon season. Nevertheless, it was identified that both LBCs were able to provide reliable reconstruction of the tropical climate condition of the Kuala Lumpur City as portrayed by similar results obtained. Thus, it is concluded that both LBCs can be employed in numerical downscaling for tropical urban regions similar to the Kuala Lumpur City

Conceptualizing Spatial Heterogeneity of Urban Composition Impacts on Precipitation Within Tropics

Urban composition has exacerbated precipitation patterns. Rapid urbanization with dynamic composition and anthropogenic activities lead to the change of physical environment, especially land-use and land cover which subsequently magnifies the environmental effects such as flash floods, extreme lightning, and landslides. Due to extreme and elevated temperature trends with exacerbated rainfall patterns, these environmental effects become major issues in tropics. Albeit several studies pointed out that rapid urbanization induced precipitation, studies about the heterogeneity of urban composition on precipitation variables are still limited. Thus, this paper review studies about precipitation pattern in relation to the heterogeneity of urban composition that successfully integrates geographical information system (GIS) and remote sensing techniques to enhance the understanding of interactions between precipitation patterns against heterogeneity of urban composition. This article also addressed the current state of uncertainties and scarcity of data concerning remote sensing techniques. Evidently, with a comprehensive investigation and probing of the precipitation variables in the context of urbanization models fused with remote sensing and GIS, they put forward powerful set tools for geographic cognition and understand how its influence on spatial variation. Hence, this study indicated a great research opportunity to set the course of action in determining the magnitude of spatial heterogeneity of an urban composition towards the pattern of precipitation