Spatio-temporal Evaluation of Urban Thermal Environment using Smart Spatial Data

The city of Casablanca, as the main metropolis of Morocco, is considered as the most populated city in the country accompanied by an important urban development. The combination of urban growth and the spread of industrial and commercial activities in this region makes Casablanca vulnerable city to climate warming and climate change. These two phenomena accentuate another problem that already exists in the urban areas which is the urban heat island that is considered as the difference in temperature between the urban and the rural zone. However, the in-situ measurements of the National Meteorology Direction (DNM) don't supply data about the land surface temperature which is useful for surface urban heat island. Furthermore, the air temperature provided by the DNM doesn't describe precise information about its spatial distribution due to the heterogeneity of the urban fabric. Therefore, retrieving detailed information about the spatial distribution of the surface/atmospheric urban heat island at a large-scale level becomes a real challenge. This research project faces this challenge by exploring smart spatial data to evaluate the urban thermal environment in the Casablanca region. To achieve that, time series of remote sensing data were used and were completely analyzed and processed. The results obtained remain so promising and highlight the contribution and the feasibility of smart spatial data to evaluate the spatio-temporal evolution of the urban thermal environment at large scale level.