Monitoring of Urban Heat Island Based on Community Scale: A Case Study of Guangzhou

Abstract

This paper is purposed to systematically explain the mechanism of community-scale urban heat island effect, thus providing a practical guidance on how to mitigate it in the urban community-scale thermal environment. Herein, a research is conducted into the surface urban heat island (SUHI) intensity on community scale in the five center urban districts of Guangzhou city. the urban heat island intensity on community scale (CUHII) of the five center urban districts is calculated to analyze the correlation between CUHII and six community factors, including plot ratio, building height, building density, the total number of community households and greening rate. The significant influencing factors for CUHII are building height, plot ratio and greening ratio. The areas with higher CUHII are located in the south of Baiyun District, the whole of Liwan District and the southwest of Haizhu District, but low in the north and the east. The CUHII in different stages of the construction concentrates on the second and third levels (4~8℃), showing an upward trend with the age of construction. There is also an increasing trend shown over time by the significance of correlation between the spatial anisotropy of CUHII and the following four factors, building height, plot ratio, the total number of households, and greening rate.