Microclimatic analysis as a prerequisite for sustainable urbanisation: Application for an urban regeneration project for a medium size city in the greater urban agglomeration of Athens, Greece

Gaitani, Niki; Santamouris, M.; Cartalis, Constantinos; Pappas, I.; Xyrafi, F.; Mastrapostoli, Elena; Karahaliou, P.; Efthymiou, Chrysanthi

doi:10.1016/j.scs.2014.02.006

Cited by 40 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 31 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Urban Heat Island has a serious impact on the energy consumption of buildings, especially during the cooling period, while it worsens the environmental quality of urban areas as well as the thermal comfort of their inhabitants [15]. This in turn affects the image of a city [16] and leads to spaces characterized by discomfort to be avoided or poorly exploited [16].…”

Section: Mitigation and Adaptation: A Problem Of Definitions A Pointmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, it increases the energy needs of building for cooling purposes, affects the health of the urban population, raises the concentration of specific urban pollutants, increases the ecological footprint of cities, and deteriorates outdoor and indoor thermal comfort levels while it augments the risk to the vulnerable urban population during periods of extreme heat [15,16,18,19].…”

Section: Direct and Indirect Costs And Consequences Of The "Negative mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Mitigative Potential of Urban Environments and Their Microclimates

Schiano-Phan

Weber²,

Santamouris

2015

Buildings

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Cities play a crucial role in climate change: More than 50% of the growing population lives in cities producing most of the global GDP but also 78% of greenhouse gases (GHG) responsible for climate change. Moreover, due to their highly modified land-use and intensive activities, cities are at the forefront of the most rapid environmental and climatic change ever experienced by mankind. Yet, cities' potential to mitigate both climate change and their own environment is underexploited. This paper explores ideas related to the potential of urban environments to modify their microclimates, reflecting on the overlapping potential between mitigative and adaptive actions. These actions in cities can not only tackle some of the largest contributing factors to global climate change but offer short-to medium-term benefits that could drive more immediate socioeconomic and behavioral changes. This review proposes and discusses a new preliminary definition of urban environments as microclimate modifiers-Mitigative urban Environments and Microclimates (MitEM)-and calls for further research into: (a) inter-connecting the full range of mitigative and adaptive initiatives already being undertaken in many cities and maximizing their input systemically; (b) developing a common and holistic definition of MitEM; (c) promoting its uptake at policy level and amongst the key stakeholders, based on its social and public value beyond the environmental.

show abstract

Section: Mitigation and Adaptation: A Problem Of Definitions A Pointmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Direct and Indirect Costs And Consequences Of The "Negative mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Mitigative Potential of Urban Environments and Their Microclimates

Schiano-Phan

Weber²,

Santamouris

2015

Buildings

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The albedo increase of roofs and paving surfaces [11,16,17]. The term albedo is defined as the hemispherical and wavelength-integrated reflectance of a material or surface [18,19].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The term albedo is defined as the hemispherical and wavelength-integrated reflectance of a material or surface [18,19]. Several studies showed that the albedo increase on a city scale contributes to lowering urban temperatures and thus to decreasing the buildings' cooling demand and the energy consumption respectively [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, Synnefa et al [23] found that for a maximum solar reflectance difference of 22 between a standard and a cool material, there was a surface temperature difference of 10.2 • C during the summer. Several researchers studied cool materials' application on urban open spaces and their positive effect on the human thermal comfort [11,17,20,[28][29][30][31]. In all those cited studies, the contribution of cool materials to ambient temperature reduction was confirmed.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Microclimate Improvement of Inner-City Urban Areas in a Mediterranean Coastal City

Makropoulou

2017

Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper investigates urban bioclimatic interventions in the central area of a coastal medium-sized city in Greece. Two urban blocks typical of the urban fabric of the city center and a neighborhood of 38 urban blocks were selected. Different proposed Bioclimatic Renewal Scenarios were investigated through microclimatic simulations using the micro-scale numerical model, ENVI-met. The simulations aimed at assessing various scenarios and examining the effect of the different bioclimatic interventions on the local outdoor environment, such as the application of cool materials, greenery of public open space, and other. Thus a parametric analysis was carried out. A final bioclimatic renewal scenario, based primarily on the parameters, proved to have a positive effect on the local microclimate, was proposed and assessed. The simulation results showed that the final scenario resulted in the most effective heat mitigation strategy for the case studies' microclimate. The vegetation-based scenario also contributed to a significant microclimate improvement in the case studies. The benefits of the various bioclimatic interventions were magnified when these were applied on a spatial scale larger than that of the single urban block, hence on the urban neighborhood scale.

show abstract