STUDY ON THE FUTURE AIR TEMPERATURE IMPACT USING STEVE TOOL AT ONE-NORTH

Abstract

Rapid urbanization has led to the phenomenon of increasing population in many large cities, which has snowballed into the proliferation of towering skyscrapers and mega structures. However, it occurs at the expense of our environment, which resulted in Urban Heat Island (UHI). Thus, constant research has been done to mitigate UHI effect. Due to the motivation in combating the negative environmental conditions, this dissertation investigates, firstly, the correlation between future air temperature and urban morphology factors for the microclimate environment in Vista XChange estate and secondly, to recommend the best technologies or design strategies in reducing air temperature in the future estates. Predicted air temperatures were calculated using STEVE platform. Three cases, namely greenery, building height and canyon width, were modelled in this study. The results have demonstrated a close correlation between greenery, building characteristics such as the average building height and urban geometry like average canyon width, in influencing the air temperature conditions in a microclimate environment. In the case of greenery, it has shown that planting trees or shrubs with higher LAI in an urban area, together with green roof and vertical greenery system is a favourable choice, as it helps to keep the range of average air temperature between 27.1°C and 28.3°C. The second modelled case concludes that the average building height does play a significant role in reducing the ambient temperature, but a weak correlation is revealed. Therefore it is important to learn that increasing building height is not always having a negative impact i.e. increase in air temperature. It can be used to provide shading to the environment. Conversely, increasing the canyon width may increase the air temperature during daytime since it increases the openness to the sky, which in turn increases the incoming solar radiation. In the third case, it is found that the ideal model for canyon width is within 30m since the range of average air temperature is kept between 27.3°C and 28.4°C. Therefore urban planners should find the optimum design to meet both design and economic objectives, i.e. UHI effect could be mitigated and energy savings could be assured.