Heat Maps: Identifying Representative Neighbourhoods for Residential Overheating Research

Other conference contribution, 2026

Over the last decade, residential overheating has become increasingly prevalent in Swedish cities, including Gothenburg. This phenomenon is spatially heterogeneous, shaped simultaneously by morphological factors, including urban form and building stock characteristics, and by socio-demographic factors, such as income level and adaptive capacity. This underscores the need to integrate multidimensional criteria to identify representative neighbourhoods for studying residential overheating. This study examines the application of Spatial Multicriteria Analysis (SMCA) as a site-selection methodology that accounts for these environmental, morphological, and socio-demographic dimensions. Applied to Gothenburg's municipally owned housing stock, the study develops spatial criteria derived from empirical indoor temperature measurements and occupant thermal comfort surveys, complemented by building stock and socio-demographic data. Criteria are standardised, weighted using the Analytic Hierarchy Process, and combined through Weighted Linear Combination to produce a composite evaluation map ranking neighbourhoods by overheating suitability. The methodology provides a transparent and replicable framework for selecting representative case-study sites for residential overheating research.