Local Climate Zones for Urban Thermal and Heat Assessment: A Systematic Review and Bibliometric Analysis (2015–2026)

Abstract

Local Climate Zones (LCZs) provide a standardised classification of urban form that has become central to intra-urban thermal research, yet the resulting literature remains methodologically fragmented and unsynthesised. This study couples, for the first time, a bibliometric mapping of the field with a thematic and methodological synthesis of how the LCZ framework is applied to urban heat and thermal-environment assessment. Following PRISMA 2020, 65 peer-reviewed studies (2015–2026) were retrieved from Scopus and analysed using VOSviewer and a structured coded extraction. The field is young and rapidly consolidating: 79% of studies appeared from 2023 onward, output concentrated in East Asia and Europe, and four thematic clusters emerged. Land surface temperature and urban heat island analysis dominate (45 of 65 studies), followed by thermal comfort and heat-risk assessment (22 studies); machine learning featured in 22 studies but as a core analytical engine in only 11. Across climates and methods, LCZs reliably differentiated surface thermal behaviour, yet this consistent core is overlaid by structured contradictions concerning intra-class heterogeneity, surface–canopy divergence, and metric scale-dependence. An integrated data-to-decision framework reframes the four themes as sequential strata gated by an untested transferability constraint. Cross-city validation and Global-South evidence are identified as priorities.