Currently in development · feedback more than welcome
Making Meerbusch heat-safe
Individual trees · Search areas · Land use types
This interactive map of the city of Meerbusch shows the land parcels of the property cadastre, the official building footprints and the search areas — street space without canopy shade. It adds the heat load from the Klimaanalyse NRW 2026, the state climate analysis, kept separate for day and night. The tree positions are not an official survey here but derived from the surface model itself.
Does the ground around my house cool down at night, and if so, by how much? Where could new trees stand, and where would they help most? How many trees are there here, anyway?
57,078 people live on 64.4 km² (IT.NRW, as of 31 December 2024). The map records 181,404 trees, 2,142 search areas and 857 public places, 321 of them less than 10 percent shaded. On a typical summer day the heat load reaches at least 35 °C on 63.1 percent of the city area — the threshold from which VDI guideline 3787 speaks of strong heat stress. In an extreme night, 56.2 percent of the area stays above 20 °C and thus in the tropical-night range.
Who lives in the heat
“Hot” here follows fixed, predetermined thresholds — the top two of five classes are counted.
Reference PET at 3 pm, typical summer day.
The 100-metre grid records 57,112 inhabitants, 44,041 of them in classes 4 and 5. The official figure is lower at 57,078 — it comes from a different source and a different reference date. It is not down to the municipal boundary: each cell only counts as far as it lies within the municipal area.
Heat and missing shade combined: 22,855 of these people live where more than half of the street space within a hundred-metre radius is simultaneously in the hot classes and under 10 % canopy shade — that is 51.9 % of those counted above. Computed over the inhabited area, 48.3 % of street space is hot and without a crown. The half as a threshold is a convention, not a measurement: if one only asks whether any such piece lies nearby, it applies to almost everyone in built-up areas.
Where missing shade is especially risky
| Type | total | in class 4+5 | of which under 10 % shade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Playground | 68 | 36 | 11 |
| Doctor's surgery | 10 | 10 | 5 |
| Social facility | 12 | 9 | 5 |
| Day-care centre | 21 | 18 | 2 |
| School | 15 | 14 | 1 |
All 24 locations are marked on the map — clicking the type opens them there.
The cuts lie at 23.0, 29.0, 35.0, 41.0 °C felt temperature and are predetermined, not calculated from this map. Class boundaries under VDI 3787: from 35°C severe, from 41°C extremely severe heat stress. Absolute thresholds, not quantiles — comparable between cities as a result.
Comparable nationwide: Where people here live, the German Weather Service (DWD) counts on average 10.3 hot days a year — days with an air temperature of at least 30 °C, normal period 1991-2020. Over the years 2016-2025 it is 14.3. This figure comes from the same source for every map in this series and is therefore comparable between places — unlike the classes above. In exchange, it describes the surrounding area, not the inside of the city: interpolated onto a one-kilometre grid, it cannot resolve a heat island between a backyard and a park.
The census grid is noised to protect small case numbers. Statements about individual cells or city blocks are therefore not admissible; across a city area the noise averages out. What is counted is the resident population, not the daytime population: anyone who comes here to work, shop or attend school is not included.
Statistical Offices of the Federation and the Länder, Census 2022, population count per 100 m grid cell (dl-de/by-2-0)