URBAN ENVIRONMENT ENHANCEMENT FOR WEATHERPROOFING OF SUSTAINABLE CITIES

Abstract

This project aims to study different ways to decrease the temperature inside tropical urban environments in order to mitigate the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. A first part reviews all the factors that are responsible for affecting the climate in urban areas. The second part focuses on studying the potential of retro-reflective materials as window coatings to mitigate the heat trapped in urban canyons. We performed experiments to determine how effective these materials are in mitigating solar heating gain when they are able to reflect solar radiation away beyond the urban canopy. It has been shown that under certain conditions, retro-reflective materials can reduce the amount of energy trapped at the ground level by 15% and therefore improve pedestrians thermal comfort. The last part of the study examines the natural ventilation of a specific area in Singapore using CFD simulation. Results are then used to evaluate the thermal comfort of the pedestrians according to some criteria.