Quantitative evaluation of the mitigation effect of low-impact development pavement materials on urban heat island and tropical night phenomena.

Abstract

Rapid urbanization has led to altered thermal circulations in major cities that are responsible for the increasing occurrence of urban heat islands (UHIs) and events such as tropical nights and heat waves. To effectively mitigate such events, low-impact development (LID) and green infrastructure strategies have been developed. In Korea, LID techniques focus mainly on road pavement materials; however, issues regarding the reliability of measurements due to differences in the measurement equipment and studied specimens persist. This study presents the design of a green infrastructure surface temperature measurement (GSTM) instrument and a reliable methodology developed to evaluate the performance of pavement materials under controlled climate conditions. The developed GSTM instrument and methodology were tested by monitoring the surface temperature of materials based on LID practices and dense-graded asphalt and evaluating their ability to mitigate UHI and tropical night phenomena. The experiments were conducted under controlled climate conditions, using summer climate conditions of Seoul's typical meteorological year data. The UHI and tropical night phenomena mitigation performance of the pavement materials was evaluated by analyzing the correlation between the pavement materials' albedo and surface temperature using porous block specimens of different colors and LID-based pavement materials. The greening block recorded the most significant reduction in surface temperature, showing a difference of 22.6 °C, 185 min to the dense-graded asphalt. The white and yellow porous blocks showed surface temperature differences of 10.2 °C and 8.2 °C respectively compared to the dense-graded asphalt. The results revealed that pavement materials with higher albedo, more evaporation, and lower heat capacity have superior performance in mitigating UHI and tropical night events.