Effectiveness of adaptation strategies for cities in different climate zones by Urb.Clim.Mod.BERLIN

Thank you so much for the valuable comments. Our respond to the comments are as follow:

1) This data could help in improving city planning and investment into green spaces. However, apart from Berlin, no other project cities are likely to benefit from the outcomes due to a lack of prerequisite conditions.

Our project aims to give a guideline for effectiveness of adaptation strategies in three different cities located in different climate zones and is based upon our recent cooperation with the scientists from those cities. All the required variables in GIS format (built-up areas, building height, land use) from Cairo and Istanbul are available via the ERAfrica project, in which we cooperated with Prof. Dr. Abbas El-Zafarany, from Cairo University, who is the dean of the faculty of urban and regional planning, as well as with Prof. Dr. Yurdanur Unal, from Istanbul Technical University, Department of Climatology and GIS. The data availability is one of the main reasons for the selection of these two cities along with Berlin.

2) Even if you have this information, based on current the ground situation – population and country’s priorities etc. – this study/data could have a short shelf-live.

You are right! Therefore, in addition to current situation, we will also use the master plan of 2050 from the two cities (already available for Cairo and Istanbul) to evaluate our strategies in the middle of the current century (time slice 2031-2060) and under emission scenarios 4.5 and 8.5. The evaluation will be carried out using the number of hot days and tropical nights and other thermal indices, which are indicators for thermal load and human thermal comfort. 

3) At the same time, it is critical to check out if any similar initiative is already underway, especially in Berlin. Conditional Yes – maybe choosing small ‘manageable cities’ from Egypt and Turkey where researchers are based.

Given that we are the only user of the urban climate model MUKLIMO_3 in Berlin and we own the largest meteorological urban measuring network with a total of 32 stations, there is no similar study in Berlin at this scale. There are many projects and action plans, which are designed by geographers or social scientists, however they do not use urban climate models. The cities of Cairo and Istanbul have been selected, based upon the availability of both data and local scientists.

4) Getting data to users in a format they can apply it is crucial.

We will generate maps and data in .csv and .txt formats which can be opened and ploted easily across the platforms.

5) Heat is clearly an issue that requires preparation and having detailed information to guide preparation is going to help community resilience.

In addition we will also generate a map for human thermal comfort, which shows the degree of heat stress in different areas in the city during hot days or tropical nights. This can give a hint to urban planners and stake holders, where to apply adaptation strategies in the city and which planning works well.

6.1 )I think this effort (and hopefully a tool all city planners can use that would emerge from it) could provide this. Questions: 1) is a more general tool that could be accessed by users without the help of the project leads going forward part of the plan,

Our idea is to adapt the model for Berlin with 100 m resolution and then make an automatic toolbox, which doesn’t need any scientist to run it.

The input data for the toolbox includes high resolved land use, topography and building data and a person who only gives the path, where the data is located. The rest will be calculated automatically and the impact maps will be generated for current situation and under different mitigation scenarios at present and in the future under RCP 4.5 and 8.5.

Istanbul and Cairo will be used for validation of the toolbox, to see if it is working well, or if there are some bugs.

6.2) is the downscaling wedded to on-the-ground mapping of thermally ameliorating factors (greenspace, water bodies, variable albedo surfaces)?

Of course! The proposed model MUKLIMO_3 is a holistic urban model and considers all urban elements with their physical and thermal properties. Not only surface materials as green spaces and water bodies and the properties of greenery (e.g. leaf area index) but also the physical and thermal properties of materials (e.g. albedo) and the urban geometry (e.g. building height, fraction of buildings) are considered in the model and are in fact the key part of its simulations (Tab. 1 and 2 in the revised proposal, Frueh et al., 2011).