City Rhythm: geo-temporal platform for integrated analysis of flows, microclimate and UHI risk

Mitigating the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect is a critical challenge for contemporary urban design, impacting thermal comfort and public space usability. Effective mitigation requires understanding human flow dynamics within Local Climate Zones (LCZ), which define urban microclimates. Current analyses are often limited by static methodologies and fragmented datasets. This study introduces City Rhythm, an interactive web-based platform that enables dynamic (hourly/weekly) analysis of inferred human presence, LCZ classification and UHI risk. The platform simultaneously visualises spatiotemporal patterns, allowing users to overlay modelled Presence Points with LCZ and UHI maps, correlating them with inferred demographic and interest data. For example, it can identify peaks in vulnerable populations, like the elderly, in compact LCZ areas during high-risk UHI periods. City Rhythm innovatively explores human-environment interactions through multi-source data integration and dynamic modelling, identifying critical areas of high human presence and UHI risk, analysing user characteristics and providing data-driven strategies for UHI mitigation and enhanced thermal comfort.