Impact of heat islands vs. city greening: Real-time monitoring and modeling of drinking water temperature in the city of Montreal in Canada

Urbanization increases the land surface temperature through surface mineralization, adversely affecting vegetation and enhancing the urban heat island (UHI) effect. Global climate change has intensified this warming effect with more frequent and intense heatwaves during hot seasons. While these transformations influence soil temperature,...

Growing With Cooler Green: To create a climate mitigating city through forest urbanism

The urban heat island effect refers to increased temperatures in highly developed urban areas and has negative impact for human activities and the social environment. This project aims to address this effect by integrating urban forests into the cityscape, while enhancing the living experience of residents.<br/><br/>The project focuses on...

Comparative analysis in thermal behaviour of common urban building materials and vegetation and consequences for urban heat island effect

The urban heat island, is a serious threat for the urban well-being, and can be determined by the local energy balance. The surface energy balance, with respect to incoming radiative energy and subsequent partitioning into reflected energy (albedo), absorbed energy and further partitioning of latter into convectional heat (QH), radiative heat ...

Characterizing the thermal effects of vegetation on urban surface temperature

Vegetation is important for urban heat mitigation. The cooling intensity of vegetation is affected by background climate and urban design. How to evaluate vegetation cooling efficiency under different climate conditions is still an issue open to discussion. In this study, a normalized indicator of urban vegetation cooling efficiency (NVCE) is...

Linking cooling by nature and urban drought reduction to irrigation measures: Tackling the urban heat island and droughts simultaneously

To reduce the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect Green Infrastructure (GI) is seen as a key measure. Though, often the need for water to evaporate is neglected. This study focuses on showing the effects of irrigation and increased soil moisture contents on GI within urban areas to reduce the UHI-effect. ENVI-met, a micro-climate model, is used to...

Kinetic Solar Envelope: Performance Assessment of a Shape Memory Alloy-Based Autoreactive Façade System for Urban Heat Island Mitigation in Athens, Greece

The paper explores the potentials of shape memory alloys (SMAs) for the design of autoreactive façade systems without using additional external energy. The exploration is conducted and assessed through the design of a façade concept for the city of Athens in Greece, aiming to improve both the indoor and outdoor environment by means of a kinetic...

Urban Heat Island and Vegetation Cooling: validating quantitative theory through building information modelling

In order to study the effects of Urban Heat Island and the possibilities of combating it with Vegetation Cooling, this thesis project proposes the use of available tools/information in Building Information Modelling. By building on an empirically validated model for the calculation of UHI, this project undertakes the translation of that model...

Land surface temperature and households’ energy consumption: Who is affected and where?

It is widely accepted that land surface temperature (LST) affects household energy consumption (HEC). There is, however, no previous study available that clarifies whether LST's impact is similar in each and every area, or if it varies from one location to another. Analysing the impact of LST on HEC of 2612 residential zones of the...

Modelling the risks of urban heat islands for the ageing society: Case study: The Hague

Heat waves are a leading cause of weather related fatalities world-wide. Due to increasing urbanisation, climate change and an ageing population, health risks for urban populations will continue to increase in the coming years. The effect of urban heat islands on the health of vulnerable groups where especially the elderly population is hit the...

Optimized Green Walls: Study of Vertical Green Systems’ Performance in an Urban Setting

The construction, operation and maintenance of buildings consume more than 40% of primary energy in most countries. Out of this 40%, a large portion is related to the operational phase involving heat losses through a buildings envelope. To reduce this loss, several materials have been developed to reduce the thermal transmittance through a...

The sensitivity of urban heat island to urban green space-A model-based study of City of Colombo, Sri Lanka

Urbanization continues to trigger massive land-use land-cover change that transforms natural green environments to impermeable paved surfaces. Fast-growing cities in Asia experience increased urban temperature indicating the development of urban heat islands (UHIs) because of decreased urban green space, particularly in recent decades. This...

Do green roofs cool the air?

Rapid urbanization and an increasing number and duration of heat waves poses a need to mitigate extremely high temperatures. One of the repeatedly suggested measures to moderate the so called urban heat island are green roofs. This study investigates several extensive sedum-covered green roofs in Utrecht (NL) and their effect on air...

Regionalist principles to reduce the urban heat island effect

Scientists, climatologists, and urban planners have started to recognize the importance of nature at two very different scales: the global (metabolic) and the local (liveability) scales. The regional scale is the one at which these macro and micro approaches overlap. Future predictions foresee an increase of more than 2450 million urban...

Integrating Urban Heat Assessment in Urban Plans

The world is increasingly concerned with sustainability issues. Climate change is not the least of these concerns. The complexity of these issues is such that data and information management form an important means of making the right decisions. Nowadays, however, the sheer quantity of data is overwhelming; large quantities of data demand...

The Visualization of Urban Heat Island Indoor Temperatures

The urban heat island (UHI) describes the phenomena that the city heats up faster and stays warmer than its rural surroundings. The combination of ageing societies and increasing temperature, due to climate change, poses serious challenges for the health and wellbeing of the increasing urban population. Assessments of the urban heat island...

The effect of 3D geometry complexity on simulating radiative, conductive and convective fluxes in an urban canyon

The Geomatics Synthesis Project (GSP) was an eight-week culminating group project by seven second-year MSc. Geomatics students. The objective was to undertake group and fieldwork through a real-world project with an external organization. In association with Laboratoire des Sciences de L'Image Informatique et Teledetection (LSIIT) at the...