An Integrated Decision-Making Framework for Mitigating the Impact of Urban Heat Islands on Energy Consumption and Thermal Comfort of Residential Buildings

Abstract

Urban heat island (UHI) is a zone that is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural zones as a result of human activities and rapid and dense urbanization. Excessive air temperature due to the UHI phenomenon affects the energy performance of buildings and human health and contributes to global warming. Knowing that most of the building energy is consumed by residential buildings, therefore, developing a framework to mitigate the impact of the UHI on residential building energy performance is vital. This study develops an integrated framework that combines hybrid micro-climate and building energy performance simulations and multi-criteria decision-making techniques. As a case study, an urban area is analyzed under the Urban GreenUP project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme. Four different strategies to mitigate the UHI effect, including the current situation, changing the low-albedo materials with high-albedo ones, nature-based solutions, and changing building façade materials, are investigated with a micro-climatic simulation tool. Then, the output of the strategies, which is potential air temperature, is used in a dynamic building energy simulation software to obtain energy consumption and thermal comfort data of the residential buildings in the case area. Finally, a multi-criteria decision-making model, using real-life criteria, such as total energy consumption, thermal comfort, capital cost, lifetime and installation flexibility, is used to make a decision for decreasing the UHI effect on residential energy performance of buildings. The results showed that applying NBSs, such as green roofs and changing existing trees with high leaf area density ones, have the highest ranking among all mitigation strategies. The output of this study may help urban planners, architects, and engineers in the decision-making processes during the design phase of urban planning.

Analyzing Urban Climatic Shifts in Annaba City: Decadal Trends, Seasonal Variability and Extreme Weather Events

“…The consistent warming trend and prolonged extreme climate conditions observed highlight the vulnerability of built environments to the impacts of global warming [29,64,66]. The exacerbation of temperature differentials within urban areas due to the urban heat island effect underscores the importance of urban planning and architectural design interventions aimed at mitigating heat stress and improving thermal comfort for residents [25,68,69]. Furthermore, the projected shift towards heightened aridity and altered climate seasonality necessitates adaptive measures in urban planning and architectural design to ensure resilience against future climate challenges.…”

A Scoping Review of Urban Planning Decision Support Tools and Processes That Account for the Health, Environment, and Economic Benefits of Trees and Greenspace

“…Among all the studies, only 10 (36%) reported decision support processes that existed in digital formats. A range of methods were employed in the development of these decision frameworks, models, and tools, including stakeholder engagement [45][46][47][48], literature reviews [49][50][51][52], primary data collection [43,44,53], and secondary data analysis [54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61]. Some studies combined methods, such as utilizing both literature reviews and primary data [62,63], both literature reviews and secondary data [64][65][66], both stakeholder engagement and secondary data [67], and both primary and secondary data [68].…”

“…Table 1 presents a summary of the synthesized results and scores for the reviewed frameworks, models, and tools based on how well they incorporate health, environmental, and economic benefits of trees and greenspace. Among the 28 studies analyzed, several patterns emerged: 11 studies [43][44][45][46][48][49][50]59,65,66,69] demonstrated the incorporation of at least one element from each of health, environmental, and economic dimensions; 5 studies integrated benefits from both the environmental and economic dimensions [47,51,[56][57][58]; and 5 studies [51,56,60,64,67,68] combined health and environmental dimensions simultaneously.…”

An Adaptive Control Model for Thermal Environmental Factors to Supplement the Sustainability of a Small-Sized Factory

“…For a more simple comparison, the Predicted Percentage Dissatisfied (PPD) displaying the result value as a percentage is also frequently used. These two indicators are particularly used in simulation-based studies that need to test various indoor environment conditions and situations by several assumptions [12,13]. Using the interrelationships between the thermal factors, several control rules for building thermal systems are developed from regression models to find new optimized rules or structures that improve performance.…”