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Urban Heat Island Mitigation Technologies
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Urban Heat Island Mitigation Technologies

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "B: Energy and Environment".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 November 2020) | Viewed by 23392

Printed Edition Available!
A printed edition of this Special Issue is available here.

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Rohinton Emmanuel

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
BEAM Research Centre, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow G4 0BA, UK
Interests: urban heat islands; thermal comfort in the outdoors; climate change and microclimate; sustainable cities; carbon management in the built environment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This special issue of Energies is intended to highlight recent practice and policy developments in the area of urban heat island mitigation. Given the traction climate change mitigation and adaptation currently enjoys in the public imagination and the role of cities in such mitigation, now is the opportune moment to highlight what works and why and to explore the policy and practical implications of both urban design and urban planning.

While it is true that the effect of urban form on local climate has been studied extensively in the last 50 years or so, deliberate design interventions to harness theoretical knowledge on climate-sensitive design in large (urban and neighborhood) scales remain few and far between. This is especially the case in the warm, humid regions of the world, where much of the unintended climate consequences of urbanization are highly negative and interventions to mitigate them are exceedingly rare.

We therefore invite researchers and practitioners to explore key issues in the following areas of urban heat island mitigation:

  1. Building design—layout and design features that maximise energy efficiency and thermal comfort without compromising the ability of other buildings to enjoy similar benefits; the use of interstitial spaces (piazzas, streets, and parks) to improve the microclimate at the neighbourhood-level;
  2. Design interventions—case studies with pre- and post-intervention measurements on the effectiveness of layout and design features that maximise energy efficiency and thermal comfort, innovative uses of interstitial spaces to improve local climate at the neighbourhood level, and urban retrofit interventions to embed local environmental performance (i.e., neighbourhood scale) in urban design theory and practice;
  3. Planning policy—critical reviews of exemplar policy interventions to mitigate the unintended climate consequences of urban growth and suggestions for ways forward.

Prof. Dr. Rohinton Emmanuel
Guest Editor

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • urban microclimate
  • urban form
  • climate sensitive design
  • planning policy
  • outdoor thermal comfort

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Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 5296 KiB  
Article
Mirroring Solar Radiation Emitting Heat Toward the Universe: Design, Production, and Preliminary Testing of a Metamaterial Based Daytime Passive Radiative Cooler
by Anna Castaldo, Giuseppe Vitiello, Emilia Gambale, Michela Lanchi, Manuela Ferrara and Michele Zinzi
Energies 2020, 13(16), 4192; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13164192 - 13 Aug 2020
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2939
Abstract
A radiative cooling device, based on a metamaterial able to mirror solar radiation and emit heat toward the universe by the transparency window of the atmosphere (8–13 µm), reaching and maintaining temperatures below ambient air, without any electricity input (passive), could have a [...] Read more.
A radiative cooling device, based on a metamaterial able to mirror solar radiation and emit heat toward the universe by the transparency window of the atmosphere (8–13 µm), reaching and maintaining temperatures below ambient air, without any electricity input (passive), could have a significant impact on energy consumption of buildings and positive effects on the global warming prevention. A similar device is expected to properly work if exposed to the nocturnal sky, but during the daytime, its efficacy could be affected by its own heating under direct sunlight. In scientific literature, there are only few evidences of lab scale devices, acting as passive radiative cooling at daytime, and remaining few degrees below ambient air. This work describes the proof of concept of a daytime passive radiative cooler, entirely developed in ENEA labs, capable to reach well 12 °C under ambient temperature. In particular, the prototypal device is an acrylic box case, filled with noble gas, whose top face is a metamaterial deposited on a metal substrate covered with a transparent polymeric film. The metamaterial here tested, obtained by means of a semi-empirical approach, is a spectrally selective coating based on low cost materials, deposited as thin films by sputtering on the metallic substrate, that emits selectively in the 8–13 µm region, reflecting elsewhere UV_VIS_NIR_IR electromagnetic radiation. The prototype during the daytime sky could reach temperatures well beyond ambient temperature. However, the proof of concept experiment performed in a bright clear June day has evidenced some limitations. A critical analysis of the obtained experimental results has done, in order to individuate design revisions for the device and to identify future metamaterial improvements. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Heat Island Mitigation Technologies)
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22 pages, 9088 KiB  
Article
The Microclimate Design Process in Current African Development: The UEM Campus in Maputo, Mozambique
by Giovanni M. Chiri, Maddalena Achenza, Anselmo Canì, Leonardo Neves, Luca Tendas and Simone Ferrari
Energies 2020, 13(9), 2316; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13092316 - 7 May 2020
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3547
Abstract
Even if current action towards sustainability in architecture mainly concerns single buildings, the responsibility of the urban shape on local microclimate has largely been ascertained. In fact, it heavily affects the energy performances of the buildings and their environmental behaviour. This produces the [...] Read more.
Even if current action towards sustainability in architecture mainly concerns single buildings, the responsibility of the urban shape on local microclimate has largely been ascertained. In fact, it heavily affects the energy performances of the buildings and their environmental behaviour. This produces the necessity to broaden the field of intervention toward the urban scale, involving in the process different disciplines, from architecture to fluid dynamics and physics. Following these ideas, the Masterplan for the Campus of the University Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo (Mozambique) develops a methodology that integrates microclimatic data and analyses from the initial design model. The already validated software ENVI-met (Version 4.4, ENVI_MET GmbH, Essen, Germany) acts as a useful ‘feedback’ tool that is able to assess the microclimatic behaviour of the design concept, also in terms of outdoor comfort. In particular, the analysis focused on the microclimatic performances of a ‘C’ block typology east oriented in relation to the existing buildings, in Maputo’s specific climatic characteristics. The initial urban proposal was gradually evaluated and modified in relation to the main critical aspects highlighted by the microclimatic analyses, in a sort of circular process that ended with a proposed solution ensuring better outdoor comfort than the existing buildings, and which provided an acceptable balance between spatial and climatic instances. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Heat Island Mitigation Technologies)
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17 pages, 4686 KiB  
Article
Understanding the Role of Optimized Land Use/Land Cover Components in Mitigating Summertime Intra-Surface Urban Heat Island Effect: A Study on Downtown Shanghai, China
by Yan-jun Guo, Jie-jie Han, Xi Zhao, Xiao-yan Dai and Hao Zhang
Energies 2020, 13(7), 1678; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13071678 - 3 Apr 2020
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 3049
Abstract
In this study, 167 land parcels of downtown Shanghai, China, were used to investigate the relationship between parcel-level land use/land cover (LULC) components and associated summertime intra-surface urban heat island (SUHI) effect, and further analyze the potential of mitigating summertime intra-SUHI effect through [...] Read more.
In this study, 167 land parcels of downtown Shanghai, China, were used to investigate the relationship between parcel-level land use/land cover (LULC) components and associated summertime intra-surface urban heat island (SUHI) effect, and further analyze the potential of mitigating summertime intra-SUHI effect through the optimized LULC components, by integrating a thermal sharpening method combining the Landsat-8 thermal band 10 data and high-resolution Quickbird image, statistical analysis, and nonlinear programming with constraints. The results show the remarkable variations in intra-surface urban heat island (SUHI) effect, which was measured with the mean parcel-level blackbody sensible heat flux in kW per ha (Mean_pc_BBF). Through measuring the relative importance of each specific predictor in terms of their contributions to changing Mean_pc_BBF, the influence of parcel-level LULC components on excess surface flux of heat energy to the atmosphere was estimated using the partial least square regression (PLSR) model. Analysis of the present and optimized parcel-level LULC components and their contribution to the associated Mean_pc_BBF were comparable between land parcels with varying sizes. Furthermore, focusing on the gap between the present and ideally optimized area proportions of parcel-level LULC components towards minimizing the Mean_pc_BBF, the uncertainties arising from the datasets and methods, as well as the implications for sustainable land development and mitigating the UHI effect were discussed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Heat Island Mitigation Technologies)
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17 pages, 4165 KiB  
Article
Exploring the Synergies between Urban Overheating and Heatwaves (HWs) in Western Sydney
by Hassan Saeed Khan, Riccardo Paolini, Mattheos Santamouris and Peter Caccetta
Energies 2020, 13(2), 470; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13020470 - 18 Jan 2020
Cited by 35 | Viewed by 5081
Abstract
There is no consensus regarding the change of magnitude of urban overheating during HW periods, and possible interactions between the two phenomena are still an open question, despite the increasing frequency and impacts of Heatwaves (HW). The purpose of this study is to [...] Read more.
There is no consensus regarding the change of magnitude of urban overheating during HW periods, and possible interactions between the two phenomena are still an open question, despite the increasing frequency and impacts of Heatwaves (HW). The purpose of this study is to explore the interactions between urban overheating and HWs in Sydney, which is under the influence of two synoptic circulation systems. For this purpose, a detailed analysis has been performed for the city of Sydney, while considering an urban (Observatory Hill), in the Central Business District (CBD), and a non-urban station in Western Sydney (Penrith Lakes). Summer 2017 was considered as a study period, and HW and Non-Heatwave (NHW) periods were identified to explore the interactions between urban overheating and HWs. A strong link was observed between urban overheating and HWs, and the difference between the peak average urban overheating magnitude during HWs and NHWs was around 8 °C. Additionally, the daytime urban overheating effect was more pronounced during the HWs when compared to nighttime. The advective flux was found as the most important interaction between urban overheating and HWs, in addition to the sensible and latent heat fluxes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Heat Island Mitigation Technologies)
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21 pages, 3577 KiB  
Article
The Cooling Effect of Large-Scale Urban Parks on Surrounding Area Thermal Comfort
by Farshid Aram, Ebrahim Solgi, Ester Higueras García, Amir Mosavi and Annamária R. Várkonyi-Kóczy
Energies 2019, 12(20), 3904; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12203904 - 15 Oct 2019
Cited by 54 | Viewed by 7637
Abstract
This empirical study investigates large urban park cooling effects on the thermal comfort of occupants in the vicinity of the main central park, located in Madrid, Spain. Data were gathered during hot summer days, using mobile observations and a questionnaire. The results showed [...] Read more.
This empirical study investigates large urban park cooling effects on the thermal comfort of occupants in the vicinity of the main central park, located in Madrid, Spain. Data were gathered during hot summer days, using mobile observations and a questionnaire. The results showed that the cooling effect of this urban park of 125 ha area at a distance of 150 m could reduce air temperatures by an average of 0.63 °C and 1.28 °C for distances of 380 m and 665 meters from the park. Moreover, the degree of the physiological equivalent temperature (PET) index at a distance of 150 meters from the park is on average 2 °C PET and 2.3 °C PET less compared to distances of 380 m and 665 m, respectively. Considering the distance from the park, the correlation between occupant perceived thermal comfort (PTC) and PET is inverse. That is, augmenting the distance from the park increases PET, while the extent of PTC reduces accordingly. The correlation between these two factors at the nearest and furthest distances from the park is meaningful (p-value < 0.05). The results also showed that large-scale urban parks generally play a significant part in creating a cognitive state of high-perceived thermal comfort spaces for residents. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Heat Island Mitigation Technologies)
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