University of Gothenburg

University of Gothenburg  is one of the largest academic facilities in Sweden with about 37000 students and 6000 employees. UoG was founded in 1891 and have five main research areas: Health, Culture, Environment, Democracy and social development and Knowledge formation and learning. Environment represents a strong Gothenburg tradition – about 40 percent of Sweden’s total research in environmental science can be linked to the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology.
The Department of Earth Sciences (GVC) within the Faculty of Natural Sciences conducts challenging and successful research concerning Earth processes and activities. GVC hosts about 90 senior researchers including PhD candidates and has a strong research profile within three overarching fields of study:
– Climate including regional climatology, urban climatology, paleoclimatology and dendrochronology
– Marine Environment including oceanography, marine geology and costal geomorphology
– Geological resources and risks including Precambrian geology, Mineral geochemistry, Quaternary and Environmental Geology and Geophysics
The Göteborg Urban Climate Group (GUCG)  was founded in the 1970s and is the leading research group in Sweden regarding urban climate and climate sensitive design. Members of GUCG conducted pioneering work on areal thermal mapping over urban areas in Sweden during the 1960s. During the last decades research has focused on projects related to the influence of the urban geometry, urban vegetation and land cover on radiation, temperature and wind. Projects also concern the relation between urban climate and air quality as well as outdoor thermal comfort. Integration of climate knowledge in urban design and planning is also an important research topic. Many of the projects are multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary, including scientists from atmospheric science, architecture, urban and regional planning, psychology, biology, and medicine. The studies have been carried out in urban areas in Sweden, Germany, UK, Japan, Botswana, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Kenya and the Netherlands. The Urban Climate Group hosted the Sixth International Conference on Urban Climate held in June 2006.
One main research area which has evolved during the last two decades is GIScience and remote sensing related to urban climate, a research field mainly focusing on morphology analysis of buildings and vegetation as well as detailed microclimatological modelling as well as anthropogenic heat flux modelling. GUCG has developed numerous tools and software packages related to outdoor thermal comfort and urban climate applications which are freely available online.
GUCG participates in research and development projects funded from organizations such as the European Union (EU), the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and others.

Fredrik Lindberg

Dr. Fredrik Lindberg is a research member in the Göteborg Urban Climate Group at the Department of Earth Sciences, UoG. He holds a MSc in Physical Geography and a PhD (2007) in Physical Geography/Climatology at UoG. Since receiving his PhD, Fredrik has been involved and leader in a number of national and international research projects ranging from outdoor thermal comfort studies to urban morphology research as well as inventory of LiDAR technology application within urban areas. His main research interests are GIScience and spatial modelling of urban climates focusing on the influence of buildings, vegetation and green spaces on human thermal comfort in urban areas as well as modelling of radiant fluxes and mean radiant temperature in complex urban settings. Other research interests are: - Modelling of global anthropogenic heat flux - Morphology studies of urban surfaces using GIS applications and spatial analysis - Development of user-friendly tools for climate sensitive planning applications - Spatial variations of potential solar energy production on roof structures in urban areas - Technologies to derive 3D vegetation in urban areas using areal imagery and LiDAR technology In URBANFLUXES he is leader of the work package aiming to improve the estimation of the storage heat flux component of the urban energy budget.

Frans Olofson

Frans Olofson is a postdoctoral researcher in the Göteborg Urban Climate Group at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Göteborg (UoG), working with urban climatology and remote sensing/GIS. He has a scientific background in physical chemistry and atmospheric science. In 2008 he received his Doctor of Philosophy in Natural Science, specialising in Environmental Science. During the doctoral project he used LiDAR to study tropospheric aerosols and clouds in two different projects – urban air quality and cirrus microphysical properties. His research interests include remote sensing, urban climatology, aerosol and cloud properties and interaction, and spectroscopy. In URBANFLUXES he is working with a model using satellite land surface temperature measurements, with the aim to improve the estimation of the storage heat flux component in the urban energy budget.

Shiho Onomura

Shiho Onomura is currently a PhD candidate in the Göteborg Urban Climate Group at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Göteborg, developing models for the urban thermal environment (e.g. air temperature and human thermal comfort). She received a B.Eng. (2008) and a M.Eng. (2011) in Science and Engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology, through the study of the relationship between wind and thermal conditions within urban areas. Her research interests are the model development of the urban thermal environment, cooling process in the nocturnal boundary layer as well as wind fields within urban areas. In URBANFLUXES she is working on the comparison of different methods of deriving heat storage flux in urban areas.