Overheating of Cities: Magnitude, Characteristics, Impact, Mitigation and Adaptation, and Future Challenges

Abstract

Urban overheating is the most documented phenomenon of climate change impacting humans. This article presents the most recent developments on the magnitude and characteristics of urban overheating and the potential synergies with global climatic change. It analyses the latest qualitative and quantitative data on the impact of higher urban temperatures on buildings’ energy supply and demand, heat-related mortality, morbidity and wellbeing, human productivity, survivability of low-income populations, and environmental quality of cities. It describes the state of the art on the development of innovative mitigation materials, advanced urban greenery, heat dissipation, and evaporative techniques as the main mitigation and adaptation technologies to offset the impact of urban overheating. It also analyses the current knowledge on the impact of each mitigation technology on energy, health, environmental quality, urban economy, and survivability. Finally, this article presents the main future challenges related to urban overheating and proposes a specific research agenda to alleviate and counterbalance its impact on human life.

A Review on Harnessing Renewable Energy Synergies for Achieving Urban Net-Zero Energy Buildings: Technologies, Performance Evaluation, Policies, Challenges, and Future Direction

“…While NZEBs associated with RE technologies are significant for the built environment in tackling climate change at both the local as well as the global scale [86][87][88], there are broader dynamic changes, from microclimates to global climate change patterns, supported by both intensifying anthropogenic factors [89] and changing trends in the natural rhythms of climate parameters [90,91]. Due to the changes triggered by global climate change (GCC) and associated events, global perception as well as policies [92][93][94] for energy system usage and planning are also evolving [95], with various net-zero targets being set worldwide [96,97].…”

What happened to urban heat island mitigation? A digital history of Wikipedia’s archives reveals knowledge circulation gaps

“…Another measure that was added to the article in 2022, "Passive daytime radiative cooling", did not appear in the analysis provided by (Aleksandrowicz et al 2017) or effectively in any comprehensive review paper on mitigation measures from the last decade except a single recent paper (Feng et al 2023). While this may indicate that science is slow to acknowledge new research directions, it is nevertheless surprising to see this strategy appearing in a Wikipedia article before it is well established within scienti c circles as a viable and practical mitigation measure suitable for large-scale implementation.…”