Arizona State University is #1!
Several recent bibliometric analyses published by other teams have established that ASU is the top group of urban climate researchers in the world. In a 2018 study in Theoretical and Applied Climatology, Huang and Lu noted that ASU is #1 in the world in terms of research impact in urban heat studies and #2 in the world in terms of quantity of published urban heat research. A more recent article in Sustainability by Xue et al., 2020 found that ASU ranked #1 in the world in terms of institutions contributing to the use of urban climate zone analysis techniques.
About our research
The Urban Climate Research Center, housed in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at ASU, employs a collaborative social/physical science framework to address critical issues in the urban atmospheric environment. Our core mission is to advance fundamental knowledge of processes in the urban atmosphere and related interactions among urban systems by supporting and facilitating interdisciplinary research activities of our faculty affiliates.
The center integrates social and physical science in this domain to develop and test urban design/management policies and strategies that enhance the productivity, health and sustainability of urban populations. End-point concerns for this center include extreme heat, air quality, flooding and drought, urban ecology and infrastructure services including energy, water and transportation.