Urban micro-climate in the City of Mosul, Iraq (The Effect of Urban Space Characters on Air Temperature) _ENG

Turki Hassan Ali,Bahjatrashadshaheen

doi:10.33899/rengj.2013.72861

Abstract

The proportion of the world's population living in urban areas is constantly increasing. Different urban shapes result different micro-climates. The way cities are planned and build is therefore important for the global energy use. The city of Mosul ( north of Iraq) had witnessed a rapid urbanization during the second half of the last century, adopting the open grid iron system in planning the new residential areas which now exist beside the traditional compact system. This study present result from measurements of Max. air temperature during hot season in (156) points in the traditional paths of the old city (called zuqaqu) and (44) points in the streets of the modern neighborhoods, more over the engineering-physical characteristics of each point had been measured. Using statistical analyzing for determining the impact of each of these characters on the urban micro climate (Max. air temperature).The primary results show that sky view factor has the major impact on air temperature, and that confirm the important role of the urban designers and planners in the urban micro-climate. Key words: urban micro-climate, traditional city, Mosul.

Highlights

The proportion of the world's population that lives in urban areas is constantly increasing
1) Sky view factor have the major effect in air temperature of the urban micro climate, this mean that the role of engineering characteristics are more important than the role of the physical characteristics of urban space
That means the important role played by urban designer in this regard

Summary

Introduction

The proportion of the world's population that lives in urban areas is constantly increasing. The way cities are planned and built is important for the global energy use, and for creating livable spaces for the individuals within the urban fabric. Most of the Arabic cities adopt the gridiron type (wide open streets) in their planning without any regard to the hot-dry climate consideration, which prevail in most of them. We look at the relationship between the built space and environment, so it is assumed that variations of urban path configurations and characters cause significant climate modifications, and has significant impact on the thermal comfort of the individuals and energy use. Mosul consists of two contrasting parts: the traditional Arabic-Islamic, organic urban pattern, the old city, and the modern city with its gridiron urban pattern. This means that the buildings shade each other, there is a great variation of traditional building elements and a large number of building details provide shade at street level

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Conclusion