Abstract
Overheated outdoor environments adversely impact urban sustainability and livability. Urban areas are particularly affected by heat waves and global climate change, which is a serious threat due to increasing heat stress and thermal risk for residents. The tropical city of Darwin, Australia, for example, is especially susceptible to urban overheating that can kill inhabitants. Here, using a modeling platform supported by detailed measurements of meteorological data, we report the first quantified analysis of the urban microclimate and evaluate the impacts of heat mitigation technologies to decrease the ambient temperature in the city of Darwin. We present a holistic study that quantifies the benefits of city-scale heat mitigation to human health, energy consumption, and peak electricity demand. The best-performing mitigation scenario, which combines cool materials, shading, and greenery, reduces the peak ambient temperature by 2.7 °C and consequently decreases the peak electricity demand and the total annual cooling load by 2% and 7.2%, respectively. Further, the proposed heat mitigation approach can save 9.66 excess deaths per year per 100,000 people within the Darwin urban health district. Our results confirm the technological possibilities for urban heat mitigation, which serves as a strategy for mitigating the severity of cumulative threats to urban sustainability.
Highlights
Urban areas face several challenges, including increased energy and resources consumption, health risks and vulnerability to extreme events[1], that must be counteracted by structures and processes that advance the well-being of people and the planet to ensure the sustainability of urban s ystems[2]
Technologies applied in the tropical city of Darwin, which is susceptible to heat-related illness with increasing temperature due to global and local climate change
The combination of high ambient air temperatures and high relative humidity (RH) levels presents a substantial challenge for human thermoregulation[44]
Summary
Urban areas face several challenges, including increased energy and resources consumption, health risks and vulnerability to extreme events[1], that must be counteracted by structures and processes that advance the well-being of people and the planet to ensure the sustainability of urban s ystems[2]. The magnitude of a UHI varies between 0.4 °C and 11 °C5 and is affected by synoptic weather conditions, the local morphology and structure of the city, urban materials, anthropogenic heat generation by human activities, and heat s inks[6]. This effect is further exacerbated by global climate change leading to more frequent heat waves[7,8] and severe consequences for urban sustainability. UHIs increase the cooling energy demand of buildings depending on the magnitude of the urban overheating, microclimate, building characteristics and performance of air conditioning systems. Thermal comfort in urban open spaces is vital to sustainable cities yet complex due to psychological a daptation[23]
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