1 [Type text] TJ15.4: WUDAPT (WORLD URBAN DATABASE AND ACCESS PORTAL TOOLS): AN INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIVE PROJECT FOR CLIMATE RELEVANT PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY DATA FOR THE WORLD'S CITIES Jason Ching 1 , Gerald Mills 2 , Linda See 3 , Benjamin Bechtel 4 , Johannes Feddema 5 , Iain Stewart 6 , Adel Hanna 1 , Xuemei Wang 7 , Edward Ng 8 , Chao Ren 8 , Oscar Brousse 9 , Alberto Martilli 9 , Marina Neophytou 10 , Grega Milcinski 11 , Michael Foley 2 , Paul Alexander 2 , Julia Hidalgo 12 , Valery Masson 13 , 1 Institute for the Environment, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA, 2 University College of Dublin, IE, 3 IIASA, Vienna, AT, 4 U of Hamburg, DE, 5 U of Victoria, BC, CA, 6 U of Toronto, CA, 7 Sun Yat Sen University, Guangzhou, CN, 8 Chinese U of Hong Kong, HK, 9 CIEMAT, Madrid, ES, 10 U of Cyprus,CY 11 Sinergise, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 12 , U of Toulouse, Toulouse FR. 13 Meteo France, Toulouse, FR 1. INTRODUCTION Given rapid population growth and urbanization, it might be apt to characterize this and the last few centuries as the Urban Epoch of the Anthropocene, Earth's most recent and human influenced geologic time period (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000). Human activities in this urban epoch have enormous influence and consequence on current and future climate. Urbanization is unavoidable and without proper management can lead to disastrous, extreme, and unexpected events. We now design powerful computer models for use as tools applicable on a global scale for guidance on climate change. More than half of the planet’s population resides in urban areas and the degree of urbanization is projected to increase rapidly; thus it is important that modeling tools be available and suitable for urban applications to develop rational urbanization approaches and guidance to mitigate deleterious effects of urbanization and supporting design for urban resiliency. The form and function of structures in urban area creates its own unique climate, which influences and impacts the quality of life, and associated environmental impacts and risks to its inhabitants. Cities and their climate will further evolve to accommodate global and regional climate changes, further population increases and availability of resources. Computer models have the potential to be applied to simulate weather, climate and air and water quality for any and all urban areas around the globe, they are * Corresponding author: Jason Ching, Institute for the Environment, UNC-Chapel Hill, 100 Europa Dr, Suite 490, Chapel Hill, NC 27517; e-mail: jksching@gmail.com strategically important tools available to the global modeling communities; moreover, they continue to evolve soas with the expectation to provide enhanced capabilities, results and guidance at increasingly finer grid resolutions. A review of several widely available community based state of science modeling systems and their requirements such as WRF, CLMU and CMAQ and the initial concepts and data collection methodologies for the WUDAPT (World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools) Project was described in Ching (2013), Ching et al., 2014, Mills et al, 2015, Bechtel et al. 2015, and See et al, 2015. The WUDAPT design concept is to acquire and make accessible coherent and consistent descriptions and information on aspect of urban morphological structures, aspects of their forms and functions relevant to climate studies on worldwide bases and to build portal (tools) that will extract relevant urban parameters and properties for models and for model applications at appropriate scales for various climate, weather, urban planning purposes. Much progress on WUDAPT has been made; we now briefly review the concepts, operational methodologies, and some initial results and near term plans. Further, a website has been created to serve its growing community of collaborators and other interested parties (www.wudapt.org). 2. WUDAPT OVERVIEW 2.1 Generating the Database State-of-science community-based grid models can provide important tools to inform, provide improved understanding and guidance on current and future evolutions of the urban habitat in this Urban Epoch. What are required are the model inputs to apply these models successfully.