Abstract
Climate change and the urban heat island phenomenon are increasingly important issues in urban thermal environments. However, there is a lack of research on the relationship between three-dimensional built environments and air temperature. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to provide policy suggestions that could be used to improve urban thermal environments by analyzing the effect of the three-dimensional built environment of an urban space on the urban air temperature according to changes in time (i.e., season, time of day). Using data from 236 automatic weather stations (AWSs) in Seoul, Korea, this study focused on three-dimensional built environmental variables and land use variables that affect air temperature in terms of season and time. The analysis results indicate that the sky view factor and porosity were lower in urban areas, with higher sky view factor and porosity values associated with lower air temperature. This study also indicates that surface roughness is higher in urban areas, with higher surface roughness associated with higher air temperature. These results suggest that urban design practices should consider the three-dimensional built environment when planning urban development and urban regeneration projects in order to improve the urban thermal environment.
Highlights
Researchers and policy makers have become interested in mitigation strategies to combat the urban heat island effect and global warming
The amount of solar radiation influx within a 500 m buffer area around the automatic weather stations (AWSs) location was lower in the high-rise urban areas than in the mountainous areas
This study analyzed the impact of three-dimensional built environments on air temperature as a function of season and time
Summary
Researchers and policy makers have become interested in mitigation strategies to combat the urban heat island effect and global warming. The consistent and severe heat problems in the summer of 2016 in Korea called public attention to the necessity of mitigation strategies for the urban heat island effect. In Hong Kong, the air temperature of the city center was lower than that of the sub-center due to the ventilation effect and the smaller amount of solar radiation [6,7]. This result indicates that increasing the building density does not necessarily increase the air temperature in urban areas. The three-dimensional characteristics of the urban environment can affect the air temperature in a complicated way
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