UrbanPlot – Urban Climate Visualization and Evaluation Framework

• Documentation
• Installation Guide
• Quick Start Guide
• Release Guide

Introduction

UrbanPlot is a Python-based framework for visualization and evaluation of climate model simulations on urban and regional scales. It provides a standardized workflow for processing, harmonizing, comparing, and visualizing climate datasets from numerical models and observational products. UrbanPlot combines automated scientific data processing with publication-quality cartographic visualization. The framework supports temporal, unit, coordinate, and grid harmonization workflows, allowing datasets with different structures and resolutions to be compared consistently. UrbanPlot is particularly designed for ICON-based climate simulations but can be extended to other xarray-compatible climate datasets. For a comprehensive introduction and detailed user documentation, please consult the project documentation.

Key Features

• Climate Model Evaluation
  • Compare climate simulations against observational and reference datasets
• Automated Harmonization
  • Temporal harmonization
  • Unit harmonization
  • Coordinate harmonization
  • Grid harmonization
• Urban Climate Visualization
  • Publication-quality maps
  • OpenStreetMap integration
  • ICON triangular grid support
• Flexible Processing Modes
  • Standalone visualization mode
  • Model-reference comparison mode
  • Time-series generation workflows
• Scientific Python Ecosystem
  • xarray
  • Cartopy
  • GeoPandas
  • OSMnx
  • NumPy
• Configuration-Driven Design
  • Reproducible workflows
  • User-defined variables
  • Flexible processing pipelines

General Information

The UrbanPlot documentation provides detailed information on installation, configuration, data processing, examples, and developer workflows. Software installation and environment setup are described in the Installation Guide. New users should begin with the Quick Start Guide, which demonstrates the complete workflow from configuration generation to figure creation. Configuration options are documented in the Configuration Guide, including the main runtime configuration, ICON plotting configuration, and OpenStreetMap configuration. The scientific processing workflow is described in the Data Processing Guide, including temporal harmonization, unit harmonization, coordinate harmonization, and grid harmonization. Practical examples for temperature and precipitation analysis are provided in the Examples section. Developers interested in extending UrbanPlot can consult the API Reference, the Developer Guide, and the Release Guide. A complete overview of the available documentation is provided on the documentation Home page.

Getting Help

If you cannot find the answer in the documentation, please open an issue in the project repository.

Authors

See AUTHORS.TXT for a complete list of contributors.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome through the CLM-Community development workflow. Please consult the contribution guidelines and coding standards before submitting changes.

License

Copyright (C) 2024-2026, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

UrbanPlot is licensed under the Apache-2.0. See LICENSES/Apache-2.0.txt for the full license text.

Bundled third-party components may be distributed under different licenses. All applicable license texts are collected in the LICENSES/ directory:

SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0