Urban heat islands are a new type of microclimatic phenomenon that causes a significant increase in the temperature of cities compared to surrounding areas. The phenomenon has been enforced by the current trend towards climate change. Although experts consider urban heat islands an urgent European Union public health concern, there are too few policies that address it. The EU carried out a project to learn more about this phenomenon through pilot initiatives. The pilots included feasibility studies and strategies for appropriately altering planning rules and governance to tackle the problem of urban heat islands. The pilots were carried out in eight metropolitan areas: Bologna/Modena, Budapest, Ljubljana, Lodz, Prague, Stuttgart, Venice/Padova, and Vienna. The feasibility studies carried out in these pilot areas focused on the specific morphology of EU urban areas, which are often characterised by the presence of historical old towns.

Urban heat islands are a new type of microclimatic phenomenon that causes a significant increase in the temperature of cities compared to surrounding areas. The phenomenon has been enforced by the current trend towards climate change. Although experts consider urban heat islands an urgent European Union public health concern, there are too few policies that address it. The EU carried out a project to learn more about this phenomenon through pilot initiatives. The pilots included feasibility studies and strategies for appropriately altering planning rules and governance to tackle the problem of urban heat islands. The pilots were carried out in eight metropolitan areas: Bologna/Modena, Budapest, Ljubljana, Lodz, Prague, Stuttgart, Venice/Padova, and Vienna. The feasibility studies carried out in these pilot areas focused on the specific morphology of EU urban areas, which are often characterised by the presence of historical old towns. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

This book discusses the concepts and technologies associated with the mitigation of urban heat islands (UHIs) that are applicable in hot and humid regions. It presents several city case studies on how UHIs can be reduced in various areas to provide readers, researchers, and policymakers with insights into the concepts and technologies that should be considered when planning and constructing urban centres and buildings. The rapid development of urban areas in hot and humid regions has led to an increase in urban temperatures, a decrease in ventilation in buildings, and a transformation of the once green outdoor environment into areas full of solar-energy-absorbing concrete and asphalt. This situation has increased the discomfort of people living in these areas regardless of whether they occupy concrete structures. This is because indoor and outdoor air quality have both suffered from urbanisation. The development of urban areas has also increased energy consumption so that the occupants of buildings can enjoy indoor thermal comfort and air quality that they need via air conditioning systems. This book offers solutions to the recent increase in the number of heat islands in hot and humid regions.​

Summarizes the science of climate change and impacts on the United States, for the public and policymakers.

In the past decades, protecting the urban environment in the face of environmentalism and environmental rights has become crucial to saving the planet from the dangers of the rapid urban development of new cities and societies. Air temperature is one of the factors influenced by climate change and contemporary city morphology that lacks compact city features. Contemporary cities have taken on global paradigms, adopting open-fabric, multiple, and ultrahigh residential towers and superhuman-scale spaces at the level of squares and public parks. This type of planning results in a radical thermal transformation not only in the movement and transportation network, but also in all public spaces and their external spaces. It is essential to understand the dimensions and principles of urban planning and design in conjunction with the competence of environmental design to reduce the impact of the urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon. Remapping Urban Heat Island Atlases in Regenerative Cities focuses on public health and wellbeing, decent work and economic growth, sustainable cities and societies, and climate action. It presents atlases of UHI-based digital techniques and methods of modelling as well as the use of these atlases, mapping, and models in exploring the placemaking problems in the new cities. Covering topics such as artificial intelligence, pedestrian density mapping, and urban heat island mitigation, this premier reference source is a critical resource for architects, city planners, urban planners, city officials, government officials, policymakers, non-profit organizations, politicians, engineers, libraries, students and educators of higher education, researchers, and academicians.

Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press, 1998.

The combination of global warming and urban sprawl is the origin of the most hazardous climate change effect detected at urban level: Urban Heat Island, representing the urban overheating respect to the countryside surrounding the city. This book includes 18 papers representing the state of the art of detection, assessment mitigation and adaption to urban overheating. Advanced methods, strategies and technologies are here analyzed including relevant issues as: the role of urban materials and fabrics on urban climate and their potential mitigation, the impact of greenery and vegetation to reduce urban temperatures and improve the thermal comfort, the role the urban geometry in the air temperature rise, the use of satellite and ground data to assess and quantify the urban overheating and develop mitigation solutions, calculation methods and application to predict and assess mitigation scenarios. The outcomes of the book are thus relevant for a wide multidisciplinary audience, including: environmental scientists and engineers, architect and urban planners, policy makers and students.

This book is part of a six-volume series on Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience. The series aims to fill in gaps in theory and practice in the Sendai Framework, and provides additional resources, methodologies and communication strategies to enhance the plan for action and targets proposed by the Sendai Framework. The series will appeal to a broad range of researchers, academics, students, policy makers and practitioners in engineering, environmental science and geography, geoscience, emergency management, finance, community adaptation, atmospheric science and information technology. This volume offers the international guidelines and global standards for resilient disaster risk reduction and lessons learned from disasters, particularly the COVID-19 and Cholera pandemics. A resilient health system and an effective disaster risk management Index are then suggested. The book further emphasizes urban resilience strategies with local authorities, adaptation strategies for urban heat at regional, city and local scales, and lessons from community-level interventions. Also addressed are coastal erosion, displacement and resettlement strategies. Land use planning and green infrastructure are suggested as tools for natural hazards reduction. Human security in times of climate change and urban heat at regional, city and local scales is discussed for an integrated action, with case studies based in Manila, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Nigeria, India, Spain, and Ghana. Structure design for cascading disasters resulting from mining and flooding is presented and sustainable smart city planning using spatial data is recommended.

Global economic forces underpin political and social issues and have real impacts on the quality of life in local communities, cities, states and regions. In the face of potential volatility, leaders in every ‘place’ concern themselves with how they can ensure local economic resiliency for present and future generations. This book argues for the strategic management of places through intentional public policy that brings together stakeholders from the public, private and nonprofit sectors to create an inclusive and sustainable economic path forward. While many economists and political scientists have proposed one-size-fits-all approaches, this book puts forward a more holistic approach, giving local leaders and policymakers the tools to take inventory of their local contexts and providing case study examples of how to craft public policies that create prosperous and sustainable economic conditions.

This book contains the proceedings of the 12th KES International Conference on Sustainability and Energy in Buildings 2020 (SEB20) held in Split, Croatia, during 24–26 June 2020 organized by KES International. SEB20 invited contributions on a range of topics related to sustainable buildings and explored innovative themes regarding sustainable energy systems. The aim of the conference is to bring together researchers, and government and industry professionals to discuss the future of energy in buildings, neighbourhoods and cities from a theoretical, practical, implementation and simulation perspective. The conference formed an exciting chance to present, interact and learn about the latest research and practical developments on the subject. The conference attracted submissions from around the world. Submissions for the Full-Paper Track were subjected to a blind peer-review process. Only the best of these were selected for presentation at the conference and publication in these proceedings. It is intended that this book provides a useful and informative snapshot of recent research developments in the important and vibrant area of sustainability in energy and buildings.