Abstract

GIS: a tool to measure the effectiveness of municipal ordinances
Track: Urban and Regional Planning
Authors: Matt Burmeister

We wanted to analyze the potential effect that an existing landscape ordinance had on the surface temperature of development sites. We performed an analysis of Landsat 7 ETM + raster imagery to analyze surface temperature at ten sites prior to and after the landscape ordinance was followed during site development. No clear, general cooling or warming trends were observed, but it appears that the temperature ratios of the sites with the greatest pre-development temperature ratios decreased while the temperature ratios of three sites with the lowest predevelopment temperature ratios increased after development. This project shows a simple method to look at climatological data in an urban environment where temperature can be variable across a relatively discrete gradient. This can be a tool to measure the effectiveness of attempts to reduce the heat-island effect in urban environments.