Solar radiation performance evaluation for high density urban forms in the tropical context

Abstract

High density development in cities is a planning strategy responding to fast population growth and limited land resources. However, the agglomeration of building mass increases the solar radiation heat gain, especially in the tropics. In order to understand how various high density residential urban forms perform in terms of overall surface solar insolation, we propose a performance indicator to quantify the solar radiation performance and a methodology to evaluate and compare the theoretical insolation performance across various urban forms. The impacts of selected morphological and geometric parameters on insolation performance are analysed to identify key design attributes contributing to insolation minimization.