ИСТИНА

More than a half of world’s population lives in cities now, and the urban/rural ratio is increasing (World Urbanization… 2014), which deserves increased attention to heavily populated areas. Contemporary meteorological models assimilate information about urban conditions for implementation of scenarios of physical interaction between atmosphere boundary layer and underlying surface (Kusaka et al. 2001). This allows more precise weather and climate predictions (Konstantinov et al. 2014). During the last two decades significant progress has been made in description of urban environment for urban climate modeling. Required parameters are extracted from satellite imagery and spatial datasets such as city vector geodatabases (Lindberg 2007). However, expensiveness and unavailability of timely data often limits the possibility of urban climate studies. Recently, volunteered geographic information received great attention as a source of information about land cover (Comber et al. 2013). Our research pioneers in the assessment of OpenStreetMap data for possibility of extraction of main parameters of land cover and urban geometry needed for urban climate research.