Multi-function mobile temperature sensors for urban heat island modeling

Urban landscapes are complicated patchworks of trees, landscaped areas, buildings, concrete, and other impervious areas. These heterogeneous landscapes influence temperature variations, which have been shown to vary significantly across a single city. Urban heat can pose health hazards in the form of direct heat stress or by complicating existing medical conditions. Detailed data on urban heat variability can help researchers and communities better understand the urban heat landscape. Our goal Is to collect data that can be used to model both solar radiation potential and urban heat regimes across an entire state. Our main tool is a fleet of custom, multi-function mobile sensor that utilize easy to use, off-the-shelf environmental sensors and GNSS. The core of the system is a small microcontroller (RP2040) running CircuitPython. The sensor suite records location and time with a basic GNSS receiver, air temperature and humidity, surface temperature, and ambient light, all within the Adafruit Stemma ecosystem. Our project will conduct extensive field temperature measurement across Iowa using the mobile sensors. These ground data will be coupled with GIS modeling to produce two highly detailed datasets that can be utilized by a variety of stakeholders. The first product will be a highly detailed modeled solar radiation map for all of Iowa utilizing next-generation topographic LiDAR data. The second product will be a detailed modeled map of temperature variations across urban areas in Iowa. This dataset will be developed based on field-collected temperature data from across numerous cities in Iowa and statistical modeling correlating LiDAR topographic and imagery data with collected temperature data.