International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 26 (2014) 447–457 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation jo ur nal home page: www.elsevier.com/locate/jag Urban metabolism and climate change: A planning support system Ivan Bleˇ ci´ c a,d,∗ , Arnaldo Cecchini a , Matthias Falk b,d , Serena Marras c,d , David R. Pyles b,d , Donatella Spano c,d , Giuseppe A. Trunfio a,d a DADU, Department of Architecture, Planning and Design, University of Sassari, Alghero, Italy b LAWR, Land, Air and Water Resources, University of California, Davis, CA, USA c DIPNET, Dipartimento di Scienze della Natura e del Territorio, Università di Sassari, Italy d CMCC, Centro Euro-Mediterraneo per i Cambiamenti Climatici, IAFENT-Sassari, Italy a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 1 February 2013 Accepted 13 August 2013 Keywords: Urban metabolism Climate change Urban sustainability Cellular automata CO2 Urban planning a b s t r a c t Patterns of urban development influence flows of material and energy within urban settlements and exchanges with its surrounding. In recent years the quantitative estimation of the components of the so-called urban metabolism has increasingly attracted the attention of researchers from different fields. To contribute to this effort we developed a modelling framework for estimating the carbon exchanges together with sensible and latent heat fluxes and air temperature in relation to alternative land-use scenarios. The framework bundles three components: (i) a Cellular Automata model for the simulation of the urban land-use dynamics; (ii) a transportation model for estimating the variation of the transportation network load and (iii) the Advanced Canopy-Atmosphere-Soil Algorithm (ACASA) model tightly coupled with the mesoscale weather forecasting model WRF. We present and discuss the results of an example application on the City of Florence. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The purpose of our support system is to make spatial planning and urban policy making better aware of the complex relations between urbanisation and climate change. Cities emit about 70% of the World’s greenhouse gases (Hendriksen and de Boer, 2011). There are two in principle straightforward levels at which we can study the contribution of cities, and of human settlements in gen- eral, to the human-induced climate change. One is that of the greenhouse gas emissions of different human activities localised in space. This approach has been made oper- ational through a range of methods for building inventories of greenhouse gas emissions. The second level is more specific to the patterns of urbanisation. For example, sprawled, low-density cities usually have higher per capita carbon emissions than com- pact cities, mainly (but not only) due to higher energy consumption for transportation. Both these levels of analysis pinpoint important factors for esti- mating greenhouse gas emissions in relation to, among others, ∗ Corresponding author at: Department of Architecture, Planning and Design, University of Sassari, P.zza Duomo, 6, 07041 Alghero, Italy. Tel.: +39 320924090. E-mail addresses: ivan@uniss.it, ivanblecic@gmail.com (I. Bleˇ ci´ c), cecchini@uniss.it (A. Cecchini), mfalk@ucdavis.edu (M. Falk), serenam@uniss.it (S. Marras), rdpyles@ucdavis.edu (D.R. Pyles), spano@uniss.it (D. Spano), trunfio@uniss.it (G.A. Trunfio). urban activities, production technologies, modes and technologies of transportation and building characteristics. But are these factors all there is? Letting operational problems aside, do they account in principle for all the relevant interactions for modelling the relation between urbanisation and climate change through the channel of greenhouse gas emissions? Our working hypothesis is that they aren’t and they don’t. Possibly, the relation between the urbanisation and the climate change runs at a deeper level as urban fluxes of matter and energy interact in a complex way with the urban fabric, the surround- ing environment, the local climate and the weather conditions. Local greenhouse gas emissions – be they concentrated (e.g. power plants, large industrial complexes, waste incineration plants, etc.) or diffused (e.g. car traffic, building heating, etc.) – are just a part of the story. For example, the CO 2 produced by a city is not equiva- lent to the city’s net contribution of CO 2 to the atmosphere, as the local CO 2 may interact with the surrounding environment and get absorbed by the local vegetation, processes which on their turn are sensitive to the winds, atmospheric turbulence and meteorological conditions in general. In this perspective, inventories and accounts of greenhouse gas emissions may not be enough, and should be coupled with more sophisticated models of the so-called urban metabolism (Newman, 1999; Wolman, 1965). The software framework we present here is a contribution to this ongoing effort to model urban metabolism of energy and mat- ter exchanges. But it also, we hold, qualifies as a planning support. 0303-2434/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2013.08.006