DIAMS

The DIAMS project aims to evaluate the contribution of thermal infrared (TIR) imagery acquired from space for the diagnosis and monitoring of urban overheating from the city to the district scale. It anticipates the arrival of upcoming TIR satellite missions, such as the Franco-Indian project TRISHNA (launch planned in 2025), expected to provide TIR data with a spatial resolution around 50 m every 2 to 3 days, and later the LSTM mission (ESA) with similar characteristics. The DIAMS project will set up robust methods adapted to urban environments to exploit remote sensing data acquired in the TIR domain to derive land surface temperatures and study thermal comfort at district scale. To reach this goal, the project is built around a coordination work-package and 5 research work-packages described below. The MODE work-package focuses on the qualification of the various models developed or used by the consortium on the basis of the data sets selected in the EXPE work-package. It also analyzes the impact of surface temperature forcing in these models. The objective of the EXPE work-package is to select and prepare the experimental data available to the consortium in the form of benchmarks for the MODE work-package along with validation data sets for the IRT and PREVI work-packages. The IRT work-package is dedicated to the implementation of methods for the exploitation of urban TIR images. Two major contributions are intended: an adaptation of the land surface temperature (LST) estimation method to the particularities of the urban environment and the use of these estimated LST in boundary conditions of the microclimatic models of the MODE component. In the PREVI work-package, the aim is to demonstrate the feasibility of producing a short-term forecasting tool for hot or cool zones at the district scale during heat waves, using satellite TIR data at fine spatial and temporal resolution. Finally, the APPLI work-package implements developments made in the IRT and PREVI work-packages to validate the possibility of using the tools set up by the illustration on concrete cases. DIAMS will thus lead to the implementation of methods and tools for: ● The estimation of land surface temperature (LST) in complex urban environments at the resolution of 50-60 m; ● The joint use of TIR data and microclimatic modeling to estimate air temperatures, which will allow a better assessment on urban overheating and thermal comfort conditions; ● The estimation of predictable temperatures a few days after the TIR data. In addition, the project will provide ready-to-use datasets as the first input for standardized case studies (Benchmarks) allowing modelers to validate and compare urban microclimatology tools.