Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-6-2025
Department
Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering
Abstract
Rapid population growth and urbanization have greatly impacted the environment, causing a sharp rise in city temperatures—a phenomenon known as the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. While previous research has extensively examined the influence of land use characteristics on urban heat islands, their impact on community demographics and UHI severity remains unexplored. Moreover, most previous studies have focused on specific locations, resulting in relatively homogeneous environmental data and limiting understanding of variations across different areas. To address this gap, this paper develops ensemble learning models to predict UHI severity based on demographic, meteorological, and land use/land cover factors in Midwestern United States. Analyzing over 11,000 data points from urban census tracts across more than 12 states in the Midwestern United States, this study developed Random Forest and XGBoost classifiers achieving weighted F1-scores up to 0.76 and excellent discriminatory power (ROC-AUC > 0.90). Feature importance analysis, supported by a detailed SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) interpretation, revealed that the difference in vegetation between urban and rural areas (DelNDVI_summer) and imperviousness were the most critical predictors of UHI severity. This work provides a robust, large-scale predictive tool that helps urban planners and policymakers identify key UHI drivers and develop targeted mitigation strategies.
Publication Title
Sustainability Switzerland
Recommended Citation
Mansouri, A.,
&
Erfani, A.
(2025).
Machine Learning Prediction of Urban Heat Island Severity in the Midwestern United States.
Sustainability Switzerland,
17(13).
http://doi.org/10.3390/su17136193
Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/michigantech-p2/1865
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Version
Publisher's PDF
Publisher's Statement
Copyright: © 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Publisher’s version of record: https://doi.org/10.3390/su17136193