Urban heat island mitigation strategies: A state-of-the-art review on Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Hong Kong

Abstract

Observing the rapid urban expansions and numerous infrastructure developments in the East-Asian context, many cities are suffering the urban heat island (UHI) effect and its associated environmental and social challenges. Moreover, the lack of sufficient attention to the application of effective heat mitigation strategies in current urban development in these cities can drastically intensify the eventual impacts of UHI. Therefore, many governmental sectors and policy makers have been implementing operative solutions for cooling cities. Nevertheless, this study argues that in Kuala Lumpur, despite the growing attention to this matter, there is still a need for more rigorous consideration by the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) professionals as well as more scholarly studies to reflect sustainable solutions to the UHI effect. As a result, today, some of the dense urban areas in Kuala Lumpur are characterized with the use of thermally massive building materials, urban surfaces with low albedo, complex urban morphology, waste heat, and low density of vegetation. On the other hand, recent studies demonstrate that there has been a rapidly increasing interest in studies related to UHI in other East Asian regions such as Singapore and Hong Kong. Hence, this study develops a comparative analysis to provide a state-of-the-art review of the recent attempts towards mitigating the UHI effect in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Among several available UHI mitigation strategies, this study is limited to the analysis of the environmental impacts of urban vegetation (green roofs, green facades, vertical greeneries and green pavements). Findings reveal that in general, urban greening can significantly mitigate the UHI intensity, both directly and indirectly, resulting in the decrease of global air temperature and mean radiant temperature up to 4 ˚C and 4.5 ˚C respectively. Overall, the study develops new practical guidelines, discusses the public benefits and elaborates on the future directions of UHI studies.

The Seasonal and Diurnal Influence of Surrounding Land Use on Temperature: Findings from Seoul, South Korea

“…Researchers extract various information from remotely sensed satellite imagery such as Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) and Landsat. They pay attention to the cooling effects of green elements in the city such as vegetation, landscaping, and greenery [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43]. Others investigate the impact of water bodies [44][45][46][47][48] and impervious land surface [49][50][51][52].…”

Mengukur Urban Heat Island Menggunakan Penginderaan Jauh, Kasus Di Kota Yogyakarta

“…Sebagai bagian dari mitigasi UHI, perluasan ruang terbuka hijau berupa vegetasi ataupun bentuk lainnya menjadi bagian penting untuk menurunkan dampak UHI (Rotem-Mindali et al, 2015). Di kota -kota besar di kawasan Asia, seperti Singapura, Kuala Lumpur dan Hongkong, upaya pengurangan dampak UHI telah banyak dilakukan, seperti penggunaan atap hijau (green roof) yang terbukti efektif mengatasi masalah UHI (Aflaki et al, 2017;Li dan Norford, 2016). …”

Vulnerabilidade às Ilhas de Calor no Município de São Paulo: Uma Abordagem para a Implantação de Medidas Mitigadoras na Gestão Urbana

“…Capítulo I Artigo 12; Artigo 25 (São Paulo, 2014) Implantação e conservação de espaços verdes, plantio de árvores e telhados verdes (Akbari & Kolokotsa, 2016;Gago et al, 2013;O'Malley et al, 2014) Preservação de corpos d'água (Kleerekoper et al, 2012) Design e forma urbana (Aflaki, Mirnezhad, Ghaffarianhoseini, Omrany, Wang & Akbari, 2016;Gago et al, 2013) Utilização de materiais com alta reflectância solar nas fachadas dos prédios, telhados e pavimentos (Aflaki et al, 2016;Akbari & Kolokotsa, 2016;Gago et al, 2013;O'Malley et al, 2014) Quadro 2 -Quadro síntese das estratégias propostas no PDE e as principais recomendações encontradas na literatura Este trabalho objetivou a busca por dados públicos acessíveis, bem como utilização de metodologia referenciada na prática internacional de desenvolvimento de índices. Dessa forma, apresenta-se replicável para outros contextos, guardadas às restrições de disponibilidade e qualidade dos dados.…”