Green and blue infrastucture to regulate thermal comfort in high density city planning. A case of Navi Mumbai, India

Abstract

Cities create an environment that is clearly distinct from their surrounding areas. Urban structures alter the surface energy budget, modify the vertical profile of various atmospheric properties, interact with both local and regional circulation, and introduce anthropogenic heat. As a result, the climate conditions in the urban environment significantly differ from their rural system. Sustainability in planning is a topic of high interest among urban planners, urbanist and policy makers yet lack of scientific knowledge in the field leads to low impact in evolving urban planning decisions. Urban climatic map, as a tool provides a visual and spatial information platform using Geographic Information System (GIS). Increase in vegetation and water surfaces, known as green and blue infrastructure (GBI), is of particular interest due to their multiple functionality and benefits for the urban environment, such as increasing urban biodiversity and improving air quality in case of urban vegetation. The urban climatic, environmental and planning parameters, as well as their impact, are considered to synthesize and comprehensively evaluate the physical urban environment with regard to thermal load and dynamic potential. The parameters considered to evaluate Thermal load include: Topography; Population Density; Land Surface Temperature; Air Temperature and Dynamic potential are: Normalized difference Built up Index; Normalized difference Vegetation Index; Normalized difference Water Index and Prevailing Wind of the study region. Study concludes with planning decisions to develop urban climatology-based map for GBI to enhance cooling effects and thereby undertaking measures to regulate thermal comfort in the city through green and blue infrastructure.