Development of an automated urban climate monitoring system in Novi Sad (Serbia)

Abstract

© 2015. This paper presents development and implementation of an automated urban climate monitoring system in mid-sized European city Novi Sad (Vojvodina, Serbia). The urban climate monitoring network contains 27 stations (25 in urban area and 2 in non-urbanized environment). To determine the representativeness station cites we used Stewart-Oke Local Climate Zones (LCZ) classification, authors' local knowledge and field surveys to delineate urban area and surrounding environments. For LCZ determination we used Lelovics-Gál automated GIS (Geographic Information System) method. Stations measure the values and every 10 minutes send the readings related to air temperature, relative humidity, battery voltage, status value and other technical information to the main server. In order for the data stored in database server to be ready for usage in urban climate studies and for analyzing entire systems' work, we created Urban Path System tool (UP-SYS_tool) and URBAN-PATH Portal. Furthermore, the automatic data procession system visualizes the measured values from urban climate monitoring network in Novi Sad and informs the citizens about the most recent temperature, relative humidity and thermal comfort measurements. These, in situ measurements should provide long-term time series in order to highlight the thermal differences among different urban structures in city/es (intra-urban and inter-urban comparisons), and contribute to better understanding of urban climate in the urban canopy layer.