Exploring the built environment impacts on urban heat exposure: An autoencoder-based approach for integrating...

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science
• Urban Planning
• Geospatial Analysis

Background:

• Urban heat exposure (UHE) is a critical urban planning challenge.
• Previous models often treated objective and subjective heat exposure separately, lacking integrated assessment.
• Existing approaches overlook the necessity of a unified methodological framework.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel evaluation framework for systematically integrating objective and subjective UHE indicators.
• To quantify the influence of built environment factors on UHE using advanced modeling.
• To elucidate the response mechanisms governing urban heat exposure.

Main Methods:

• Knowledge-guided autoencoder for integrating objective and subjective heat exposure indicators.
• TabPFN-SHAP model for quantifying built environment factor influence.
• Analysis of heat exposure intensity, spatial distribution, and influencing factors.

Main Results:

• Heat exposure intensity and distribution vary significantly across different analytical perspectives.
• Commercial and life service Points of Interest (POIs) concentrate in high-exposure areas; public/recreational POIs are in lower-exposure zones.
• Transport station density, blue-green space proportion, and residential land proportion are dominant UHE factors.
• High residential land proportion and older building ages showed an antagonistic effect on UHE, contrary to common assumptions.

Conclusions:

• The integrated framework provides a deeper understanding of UHE mechanisms.
• Findings offer actionable guidance for effective urban thermal environment management.
• Results challenge conventional assumptions about older residential neighborhoods and heat exposure.