Edu-Clima: A Didactic Tool for the Simulation and Modeling of Urban Climate

This article presents the development and validation of Edu-Clima, an open-source educational application for simulating urban surface temperature. The objective of this study was to develop and validate an urban surface temperature simulation application for educational purposes by comparing its results with those obtained via ENVI-met software and evaluating its reliability for use in teaching urban climatology. Edu-Clima was built in Python and uses libraries such as Streamlit, Pandas, Matplotlib, Seaborn, and Plotly to create an interactive and visually educational interface. The methodology involved comparing the results of Edu-Clima with those of ENVI-met, using 12 different scenarios, each with 23 simulations, totaling 276 simulations. The scenarios considered variables such as surface temperature, leaf area index (high, medium, low), ground cover (50% asphalt or concrete), and soil type (exposed or vegetated). The results revealed that although ENVI-met consistently presented higher temperatures, Edu-Clima followed a pattern closer to a "climate normal." Statistical analyses, including quadratic regression and PERMANOVA, revealed that, despite visual differences, there is no statistically significant distinction between the temperatures simulated by the two tools, validating Edu-Clima for educational purposes, in line with SDG 4 (Quality Education), which emphasizes the promotion of inclusive and accessible educational resources. However, Edu-Clima showed greater sensitivity in vegetated scenarios, indicating a limitation in evapotranspiration and shading modeling, which are more accurate in ENVI-met. In the future, we highlight the importance of improving the modeling of vegetation effects, including variables such as evapotranspiration, soil moisture, and shading.