Abstract
The changing climate has introduced new and unique challenges and threats to humans and their environment. Urban dwellers in particular have suffered from increased levels of heat stress, and the situation is predicted to continue to worsen in the future. Attention toward urban climate change adaptation has increased more than ever before, but previous studies have focused on indoor and outdoor temperature patterns separately. The objective of this research is to assess the indoor and outdoor temperature patterns of different urban settlements. Remote sensing data, together with air temperature data collected with temperature data loggers, were used to analyze land surface temperature (outdoor temperature) and air temperature (indoor temperature). A hot and cold spot analysis was performed to identify the statistically significant clusters of high and low temperature data. The results showed a distinct temperature pattern across different residential units. Districts with dense urban settlements show a warmer outdoor temperature than do more sparsely developed districts. Dense urban settlements show cooler indoor temperatures during the day and night, while newly built districts show cooler outdoor temperatures during the warm season. Understanding indoor and outdoor temperature patterns simultaneously could help to better identify districts that are vulnerable to heat stress in each city. Recognizing vulnerable districts could minimize the impact of heat stress on inhabitants.
Highlights
Human beings have long recognized that cities designed with nature in mind are beneficial, practical and aesthetically pleasing [1]
Heat stress caused by the urban heat island (UHI) effect has been shown to have a dramatic impact on human health [14], and urban citizens in particular are likely to suffer more in the future [15,16,17]
This study focuses on the spatial patterns of temperature in an urban context, the indoor and outdoor temperature patterns of urban settlements
Summary
Human beings have long recognized that cities designed with nature in mind are beneficial, practical and aesthetically pleasing [1]. The population of urban inhabitants is expected to reach 6.4 billion out of a total population of 9.7 billion (66 percent) by 2050 [3]. This brings urban areas and cities to the center of attention more than ever before. Increases in surface temperature (known as global warming) and more frequent and intensive heatwaves in urban areas, coupled with the urban heat island (UHI) effect, can dramatically increase the risk of heat stress for inhabitants in cities [4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. It is expected that an increase in heat stress could result in the average global income being reduced by 23%
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