Local Climate Zones to Identify Surface Urban Heat Islands: A Systematic Review

The Land Surface Temperature (LST) obtained by remote sensing data is an essential indicator for analyzing the Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI). A factor contributing to its occurrence is the reflections of the different materials in urban and rural areas, which significantly affect the energy balance near the surface. Therefore, recent studies have increasingly used the Local Climate Zones (LCZs) classification system to discriminate those urban areas. Therefore, our study aims to perform a systematic review using the PRISMA method of LCZ classification applied to understand the LST and the SUHI phenomenon. At first, 10,403 related articles were found in the scientific literature which, after passing through filtering stages, resulted in 51 that were further analyzed. Our results showed that these articles were very recent, beginning in 2016, and present an increasing trend. Even though all articles reviewed somehow try to understand the Urban Heat Island phenomenon, in more than half of them, the SUHI calculation method was not mentioned. China was the country with the most studies. Images from Landsat and TERRA/AQUA sensors appeared in 82% of the studies. The method that appears the most to LCZ definitions is from the World Urban Database. Finally, we conclude that LCZ mapping methodologies were accurate enough for SUHI studies considering the current climatic changes. Therefore, this systematic review can help new studies on SUHI identification through LCZ in different world areas using remote sensing data to estimate the LST.