HiTAB-Chicago: HeIght map of Trees And Buildings for the city of Chicago

The vertical dimensions of urban morphology, specifically the heights of buildings and trees, exert significant influence on wind flow fields in urban street canyons and the thermal properties of urban fabric, subsequently affecting the microclimate, noise levels, and air quality. Despite their importance, these critical attributes are less commonly available and rarely utilized in urban climate models compared to planar land use and land cover data. In our study, we explicitly mapped the height of trees and buildings (HiTAB) across the city of Chicago at 1-meter spatial resolution, using a data fusion approach. This approach integrates high-precision LiDAR cloud point data, building footprint inventory, and multi-band satellite images. Specifically, the digital terrain and surface models were first created from the LiDAR dataset to calculate the height of surface objects, while the rest of the datasets were used to delineate trees and buildings. We validated the derived height information against the existing building database in downtown Chicago and the Meter-scale Urban Land Cover map from the Environmental Protection Agency, respectively. Given their high spatial resolution, the height maps will enhance the parameterization process in physical-based models ranging from the simplest slab urban canopy model to the much-sophisticated computational fluid dynamics model. In addition, the datasets can also inform data-driven urban models to achieve higher resolution and lower uncertainties. Moreover, our method can be extended to other urban regions, benefiting from the growing availability of high-resolution urban informatics globally. Ultimately, these datasets can substantially contribute to future studies on hyper-local weather dynamics, urban heterogeneity, morphology, and planning, providing a more comprehensive understanding of urban environments.