A step towards improved climate service usability - A case-study of the urban heat stress prob-lem in Eindhoven

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2023-08-11
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en
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This research studied the usability of climate services that can be used within decision-making processes regarding the reduction of urban heat stress. To study this, a case study was performed on Eindhoven; a city in the Netherlands where the urban heat island-effect is rather prominent (up to 5 °C warmer in the built environment than in the rural areas surrounding it) thus causing urban heat stress. The main empirical data source of this research were interviews and analysis of climate services used by the municipality of Eindhoven. The findings of the research were that some of the climate services used by the municipality of Eindhoven were suffering from usability gaps, resulting in the inability to use them in the extent to which the municipality wants to use them. These usability gaps were mostly revolving around the accuracy on smaller scale levels of the climate service. This research also found that there is a general lack of acknowledgement or prioritization regarding the UHI-effect and the complementary urban heat stress within the municipality. This also could, however, potentially be explained by usability gaps in the climate services used, as they did not succeed in expressing the risks of the situation sufficiently.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen