The urban climate is continuously deteriorating. Urban heat lowers the quality of urban life, increases energy needs, and affects the urban socio-economy. Urban Climate Mitigation Techniques presents steps that can be taken to mitigate this situation through a series of innovative technologies and examples of best practices for the improvement of the urban climate. Including tools for evaluation and a comparative analysis, this book addresses anthropogenic heat, green areas, cool materials and pavements, outdoor shading structures, evaporative cooling and earth cooling. Case studies demonstrate the success and applicability of these measures in various cities throughout the world. Useful for urban designers, architects and planners, Urban Climate Mitigation Techniques is a step by step tour of the innovative technologies improving our urban climate, providing a holistic approach supported by well-established quantitative examples.

The combination of global warming and urban sprawl is the origin of the most hazardous climate change effect detected at urban level: Urban Heat Island, representing the urban overheating respect to the countryside surrounding the city. This book includes 18 papers representing the state of the art of detection, assessment mitigation and adaption to urban overheating. Advanced methods, strategies and technologies are here analyzed including relevant issues as: the role of urban materials and fabrics on urban climate and their potential mitigation, the impact of greenery and vegetation to reduce urban temperatures and improve the thermal comfort, the role the urban geometry in the air temperature rise, the use of satellite and ground data to assess and quantify the urban overheating and develop mitigation solutions, calculation methods and application to predict and assess mitigation scenarios. The outcomes of the book are thus relevant for a wide multidisciplinary audience, including: environmental scientists and engineers, architect and urban planners, policy makers and students.

This e-book is a suitable reference on the technical and scientific competence related to effective application and integration of cool materials in the built environment. The e-book is an overview on the following: • The role of cool materials in the built environment. • Major cool materials techniques and their benefits and drawbacks. • Research trends in cool materials for the built environment. • Technical guidelines for instrumentation, testing and rating of cool materials. • Policy and economic aspects of cool materials necessary for the management of built environments. • Case studies where the cool materials are implemented. This e-book is a suitable reference on the technical and scientific competence related to effective application and integration of cool materials in the built environment. The e-book is an overview on the following: • The role of cool materials in the built environment. • Major cool materials techniques and their benefits and drawbacks. • Research trends in cool materials for the built environment. • Technical guidelines for instrumentation, testing and rating of cool materials. • Policy and economic aspects of cool materials necessary for the management of built environments. • Case studies where the cool materials are implemented.

Heat islands are urban and suburban areas that are significantly warmer than their surroundings. Traditional, highly absorptive construction materials and a lack of effective landscaping are their main causes. Heat island problems, in terms of increased energy consumption, reduced air quality and effects on human health and mortality, are becoming more pressing as cities continue to grow and sprawl. This comprehensive book brings together the latest information about heat islands and their mitigation. The book describes how heat islands are formed, what problems they cause, which technologies mitigate heat island effects and what policies and actions can be taken to cool communities. Internationally renowned expert Lisa Gartland offers a comprehensive source of information for turning heat islands into cool communities. The author includes sections on cool roofing and cool paving, explains their benefits in detail and provides practical guidelines for their selection and installation. The book also reviews how and why to incorporate trees and vegetation around buildings, in parking lots and on green roofs.

Although the technology of observation and prediction of atmospheric systems draws upon many common fields, until now the interrelatedness and interdisciplinary nature of these research fields have scarcely been discussed in one volume containing fundamental theories, numerical methods, and operational application results. This is a book to provide in-depth explorations of the numerical methods developed to better understand atmospheric systems, which are introduced in eight chapters. Chapter 1 presents an efficient algorithm for tropical cyclone center determination by using satellite imagery. Chapter 2 aims to identify atmospheric systems with a new polarization remote sensing method. Chapters 3-8 place emphasis on enhancing the performance of numerical models in the prediction of atmospheric systems that should be valuable for researchers and forecasters.

Low Carbon Cities is a book for practitioners, students and scholars in architecture, urban planning and design. It features essays on ecologically sustainable cities by leading exponents of urban sustainability, case studies of the new directions low carbon cities might take and investigations of how we can mitigate urban heat stress in our cities’ microclimates. The book explores the underlying dimensions of how existing cities can be transformed into low carbon urban systems and describes the design of low carbon cities in theory and practice. It considers the connections between low carbon cities and sustainable design, social and individual values, public space, housing affordability, public transport and urban microclimates. Given the rapid urbanisation underway globally, and the need for all our cities to operate more sustainably, we need to think about how spatial planning and design can help transform urban systems to create low carbon cities, and this book provides key insights.