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Sustainability Challenges in Urban Heat Island Mitigation Strategies
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Sustainability Challenges in Urban Heat Island Mitigation Strategies

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Urban and Rural Development".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2023) | Viewed by 10639

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Jinda Qi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore, 4 Architecture Drive, Singapore 117566, Singapore
Interests: urban heat island; urban heat mitigation strategies; decision-making framework; sustainable urban planning
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Jianwen Dong

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Landscape Architecture, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou 350002, China
Interests: green infrastructure; ecosystem service; air pollution; sustainable urban and landscape planning
Prof. Dr. Baojie He

grade E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China
Interests: urban heat mitigation and adaptation; heat health; heat-resilient infrastructure; urban microclimate; net-zero carbon built environment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Urban heat islands (UHIs) have been evident in many cities. Existing evidence indicates that UHIs can cause numerous negative impacts on air quality, outdoor thermal comforts, public health, economic productivity, and energy consumption, and thereby significantly deteriorate the urban environment. Extensive strategies have been developed to mitigate UHIs, such as urban greenery, cool materials, water techniques, and optimised urban morphology. However, it is still challenging to prioritise these strategies to support UHI mitigation as mitigation performances vary significantly with climatic and urban contexts. The application of such mitigation strategies is also affected by the policy, technical, social, and economic factors. This Special Issue aims to provide a platform to discuss challenges, opportunities, and solutions on the characterisation, assessment, application, and decision making of UHI mitigation strategies. The platform will support evidence-based urban governance for UHI mitigation and well-informed urban planning and design.

The main topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  1. Environmental, social, and economic impacts of urban heat island (e.g., air pollution, heat-related mortality, and productivity loss);
  2. Advances in urban heat island mitigation strategies;
  3. Effects of green and blue infrastructures;
  4. Holistic assessment of mitigation performance;
  5. Optimal strategies for heat island mitigation;
  6. Applications of mitigation techniques and strategies;
  7. Innovative models, tools and systems for decision making;
  8. Policy to inform urban heat island mitigation;
  9. Climate-related urban planning and design;
  10. Perception and knowledge of urban heat island;
  11. Challenges in urban heat island mitigation.

Dr. Jinda Qi
Prof. Dr. Jianwen Dong
Prof. Dr. Baojie He
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 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 heat island
  • climate change impact
  • mitigation strategies
  • sustainable assessment
  • decision making
  • urban governance
  • cooling cities

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 11060 KiB  
Article
Spatio-Temporal Dynamic Characteristics and Landscape Connectivity of Heat Islands in Xiamen in the Face of Rapid Urbanization
by Ziyi Chen, Xiaoqian Lin, Mingzhe Li, Ye Chen, Yabing Huang, Yujie Zhu, Jiaxin Chen, Taoyu Li, Weicong Fu and Jianwen Dong
Sustainability 2023, 15(19), 14603; https://doi.org/10.3390/su151914603 - 9 Oct 2023
Viewed by 1254
Abstract
With the acceleration of urbanization, urban heat waves have become a major problem affecting the lives of citizens. In this context, the accurate identification of the key patches and nodes of urban heat islands is important for improving the urban environment. This study [...] Read more.
With the acceleration of urbanization, urban heat waves have become a major problem affecting the lives of citizens. In this context, the accurate identification of the key patches and nodes of urban heat islands is important for improving the urban environment. This study examined the Landsat image data from Xiamen city in 2001, 2011, and 2021 to analyze the construction of the urban heat island (UHI) network. A morphological spatial pattern analysis (MSPA) and landscape connectivity model were utilized to identify the central thermal landscape patches and key nodes of UHI and their spatial and temporal evolution characteristics in the urban development process. The ultimate goal of this research is to provide valuable insights that can contribute to the enhancement of the urban environment. The results showed that (1) there was a significant increase in the heat island area (HIA) of Xiamen from 2001 to 2021, and the heat island patches show a concentrated trend. The temperature contrast between the urban area and the surrounding countryside was more distinct, indicating the urban construction land has a tendency to gather and spread. (2) The core area of the heat island accounted for the largest proportion of the thermal landscape area during the study period, and its proportion increased significantly. And the rate of increase was first rapid and then slow. The areas of the edge, branch, islet, bridge, loop, and perforation classes all showed different degrees of a decreasing trend. This indicates an increasing degree of aggregation between heat island patches. (3) The top 20 thermal landscape patches with high landscape connectivity importance values were identified. Among them, the importance value and area of the first four patches are relatively large, and belong to the three importance classes of extremely important, important, and generally important heat island core patches, which deserve focused attention and optimization. (4) Cooling measures can be prioritized for core areas of heat islands with high importance values. Connections between hot and cold islands can be interrupted or connected to mitigate the heat island effect throughout the region. The results of this study have important practical guidance for urban planning and sustainable development. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Challenges in Urban Heat Island Mitigation Strategies)
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22 pages, 7066 KiB  
Article
The Impact of Urban Expansion on the Urban Thermal Environment: A Case Study in Nanchang, Jiangxi, China
by Jianping Zhang, Gengying Jiao, Qing Ye and Xinren Gu
Sustainability 2022, 14(24), 16531; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142416531 - 9 Dec 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1850
Abstract
Urban expansion has been changing the urban thermal environment. Understanding the spatial distribution and temporal trends in the urban thermal environment is important in guiding sustainable urbanization. In this study, we focused on the land use/land cover (LULC) changes and urban expansion in [...] Read more.
Urban expansion has been changing the urban thermal environment. Understanding the spatial distribution and temporal trends in the urban thermal environment is important in guiding sustainable urbanization. In this study, we focused on the land use/land cover (LULC) changes and urban expansion in Nanchang city, Jiangxi province, China. The four elements in the remote sensing-based ecological index (RSEI) are heat, greenness, dryness, and wetness, which correspond to the land surface temperature (LST), NDVI, NDBSI, and WET, respectively. According to the synthetic images of the average indices, we conducted temporal trend analysis together with statistical significance test for these images. We conducted partial correlation analyses between LST and NDVI, NDVSI, as well as WET. In addition, we used the LULC maps to analyze the multi-year trends in urban expansion. Then, we superimposed the trends in daytime and nighttime LST in summer on urban expansion area to extract the LST trends at sample locations. The results showed that LULC in Nanchang has substantially changed during the study period. The areas with statistically significant trends in LST coincided with the urban expansion areas. Land cover change was the main reason for LST change in Nanchang. In particular, artificial surfaces showed the greatest increase in LST; for per 100 km2 expansion in artificial surfaces, the daytime and nighttime LST increased by 0.8 °C and 0.7 °C, respectively. Among all the study land cover types, water bodies showed the greatest differences in LST change between the daytime and nighttime. There were statistically significant correlations between increases in LST and increases in NDBSI as well as decreases in NDVI and WET. In view of the considerable impact of urban expansion on the urban thermal environment, we urge local authorities to emphasize on urban greening when carrying out urban planning and construction. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Challenges in Urban Heat Island Mitigation Strategies)
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24 pages, 6626 KiB  
Article
Evaluation of the Thermal Environmental Effects of Urban Ecological Networks—A Case Study of Xuzhou City, China
by Nana Guo, Xinbin Liang and Lingran Meng
Sustainability 2022, 14(13), 7744; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14137744 - 24 Jun 2022
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 2491
Abstract
Urban heat islands (UHIs) constitute an important ecological problem in cities. Ecological space has a positive effect on UHI mitigation, which can be effectively organized in the form of ecological networks. In this study, the framework for structural UHI improvement based on ecological [...] Read more.
Urban heat islands (UHIs) constitute an important ecological problem in cities. Ecological space has a positive effect on UHI mitigation, which can be effectively organized in the form of ecological networks. In this study, the framework for structural UHI improvement based on ecological networks considering the source-corridor model is proposed to examine the spatial threshold of the thermal effect of ecological network factors. Additionally, the cooling mechanism of each constituent element in the ecological network context is further explored. The results demonstrate that (1) an obvious cold and heat island spatial aggregation distribution exists in the Xuzhou main urban area, and land of the same land use type exhibits the dual thermal environmental properties of cold and heat islands through its spatial distribution and characteristics. Ecological space is the main bearing area of cold islands. (2) The ecological network in the main urban area of Xuzhou city occurs at a moderately complex level, and the overall network efficiency is acceptable; the network connectivity is low, while the network loop distribution is uneven. (3) Ecological networks represent an effective spatial means to improve overall UHI patterns. The ecological source area cooling threshold is 300 m, and the optimal threshold is 100 m, while the ecological corridor width threshold is 500 m and 60 m, respectively. (4) Within the optimal threshold in the context of ecological networks, the temperature of ecological sources in category G land is influenced by NDBI and FVC; ecological corridors are mainly influenced by NDBI. The results can provide a quantitative basis for urban ecological network planning considering UHI improvement and a reference for urban thermal environment research within different ecological substrates and planning and control systems in other countries and regions worldwide. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Challenges in Urban Heat Island Mitigation Strategies)
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21 pages, 4224 KiB  
Article
Estimation of the Urban Heat Island Effect in a Reformed Urban District: A Scenario-Based Study in Hong Kong
by Rui Zhu, Xijia Dong and Man Sing Wong
Sustainability 2022, 14(8), 4409; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14084409 - 7 Apr 2022
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 3293
Abstract
Urban heat island (UHI), a phenomenon in which land surface temperatures (LSTs) in an urban area are notably higher than that in the surrounding rural area, has made the living environment thermally uncomfortable, endangered public health, and increased the energy consumption on indoor [...] Read more.
Urban heat island (UHI), a phenomenon in which land surface temperatures (LSTs) in an urban area are notably higher than that in the surrounding rural area, has made the living environment thermally uncomfortable, endangered public health, and increased the energy consumption on indoor air cooling. To develop a liveable and sustainable city, it is crucial to provide an accurate estimation of the UHI effect for urban planners when an area is transformed from bare lands to a high density of buildings. With this objective, the study develops multivariate spatial regression models based on LSTs retrieved from Landsat-8 thermal images to estimate the distribution of urban heat magnitudes (i.e., UHMs, relative temperatures referenced to rural temperature), by considering four types of causative factors that include land use and land cover, urban morphology, heat source, and local climate zones. Partial correlation analysis is performed to determine explainable variables and R2 is used to evaluate the models. Based on the constructed models and a master plan of buildings in Kowloon East, Hong Kong, the future UHM distributions are forecasted on four representative days in different seasons. Results show that the UHI effect will be mitigated significantly when the new buildings are built, suggesting appropriate urban planning regarding the urban thermal environment. We found that the considered factors can largely explain the daytime UHIs in both the built-up areas and land-cover areas. The proposed method can also be used to optimize the urban design for creating a more thermo-friendly urban environment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Challenges in Urban Heat Island Mitigation Strategies)
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