ORIGINAL PAPER Landscape features and potential heat hazard threat: a spatial–temporal analysis of two urban universities Adi Wibowo 1,2 • Khairulmaini Osman Salleh 1 Received: 8 April 2016 / Accepted: 1 February 2018 / Published online: 28 May 2018 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Urban universities are a microcosm of urban built-up areas, such as cities, but with a much smaller scale of spatial resolution. Within universities, there are many types of landscape features exhibiting different heat absorption and transmission capacities. These landscape features generate spatial–temporal heat signatures, and the knowledge about landscape features and urban heat hazard on university campuses is limited. The objective of this research is an assessment of landscape features and the potential heat hazard threats of two urban universities in ASEAN, located in the centre of the equatorial region. The focus of this research is on urban heat hazards in two urban universities in ASEAN, the University of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur and the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, within the context of the spatial–temporal behaviour of urban heat and the urban heat effects on the environment and human well-being on campuses. The spatial and temporal analysis used to answer the objective of this research via data-gathering methods from image satellite, ground trough, and human perception study. The UM campus and UI campus, both urban campuses, had similar landscape features but had different total percentage areas of these features. The UM campus was 59.1% covered by the densely vegetated surface landscape feature, a percentage lower than that of the UI campus, which was 65.3% vegetation covered. The temporal results for the UHS of the UM campus in 2013–2016 show a maximum temperature of 39 °C. Therefore, the UHS of the UI campus demon- strated temporal behaviour in 2013–2016, with a maximum temperature of 38 °C. The UHS behaviour of the UM campus and UI campus had an air surface temperature with a maximum average temperature of 33 °C. The air surface temperatures exceeding 32 °C at the UM campus (12 pm until 6 pm = 5 h) lasted for a longer time than those at the UI campus (12 pm until 3 pm = 3 h). This study showed that, based on the perceptions on & Adi Wibowo adi.w@sci.ui.ac.id; adi.w@siswa.um.edu.my 1 Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 2 Department of Geography, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Indonesia, Depok 16424, Indonesia 123 Nat Hazards (2018) 92:1267–1286 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-018-3363-3