Our LEGO Urban Climate Workshop has won the Outreach & Communication Award 2026 from the European Meteorological Society (EMS)! The award was presented on 7 September 2026 during the annual EMS conference in Utrecht.
The project, “Instant AI Urban Climate Modelling and LEGO”, was initiated by Prof. Dr. Lesley De Cruz (Vrije Universiteit Brussel / Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium), together with Andrei Covaci, Firass Kooli, Dr. Sara Top, and Geert De Paepe. The jury praised how the project “successfully bridges complex meteorological science and public outreach, making the invisible dynamics of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect both tangible and actionable.”
During the workshop, participants from age 7 build a miniature city out of LEGO, which is then scanned in a LEGO temperature box. An AI model, trained on data from the VLINDER citizen science project, instantly calculates how temperature varies across the city. Swap a parking lot for a park, and you immediately see the effect on screen.
The project is a collaboration between researchers from RMI, VUB, UGent, and KdG, and is funded by Innoviris. The workshop has already attracted thousands of visitors at fairs and science festivals, and previously won second place for Best Student Presentation at the International Conference on Urban Climate, as well as the Science Communication Award from the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
More information: meteo.be and emetsoc.org.