Article
Environmental Sciences
Xiaojiang Li, T. C. Chakraborty, Guoqing Wang
Summary: Many cities are facing increased extreme heat during hot summers due to global temperature rise, resulting in worse thermal comfort in urban areas. Quantitative information on spatial distributions of urban heat is crucial for cities' resilience and adaptation to climate change. This study compares satellite-derived land surface temperature (LST) and urban microclimate modeling-based mean radiant temperature (Tmrt) for mapping urban heat distributions in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The results show that both LST and Tmrt display a similar overall pattern of urban heat, but Tmrt provides more detailed variations on a street-by-street and neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. LST has a stronger correlation with Tmrt on building roofs, which are typically not inhabited.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Wenjing Ren, Jingyuan Zhao, Xina Ma, Xiao Wang
Summary: This study focuses on the three-dimensional architectural landscape in six districts of Xi'an, utilizing GIS technology and introducing new landscape indices to analyze spatial distribution characteristics. The results reveal a characteristic scale of about 8 km and a high degree of spatial autocorrelation in the city's main urban area.
Article
Environmental Sciences
Maria Angela Dissegna, Tiangang Yin, Hao Wu, Nicolas Lauret, Shanshan Wei, Jean-Philippe Gastellu-Etchegorry, Adrienne Gret-Regamey
Summary: The study introduces a new method using 3-D DART model for detailed modeling of Tmrt spatial distribution, capable of simulating Tmrt at different scales and considering various parameters. Additionally, the method demonstrates fine treatment of radiation, optical properties of materials, and vegetation composition.
Article
Urban Studies
Wenning Li, Ranhao Sun, Hongbin He, Liding Chen
Summary: This study proposes a novel landscape pattern three-dimensional metric (LP3DM) to quantitatively represent residents' perceptibility of street landscapes. Using Baidu street view images and Weibo social media data in Beijing, the results show that LP3DM is more significantly correlated with residents' sentiments compared to LP2DM. Notably, the greenness metric plays a crucial role in residents' sentiments. The study emphasizes the importance of considering not only the quantity but also the perceptibility of natural landscape elements in urban construction to enhance residents' emotional well-being.
Article
Construction & Building Technology
Daoming Xing, Nianping Li
Summary: A three-dimensional heat transfer model for globe thermometers was established to evaluate their thermal behavior in radiant cooling indoor environments. The study found that metal globe thermometers had uniform temperatures, while acrylic globe thermometers showed some temperature differences, but with small air temperature deviations.
BUILDING AND ENVIRONMENT
(2021)
Article
Construction & Building Technology
Yuying Liang, Nan Zhang, Huijun Wu, Xinhua Xu, Ke Du, Jianming Yang, Qin Sun, Kaijun Dong, Gongsheng Huang
Summary: The study shows that the thermal environment and thermal comfort created by the DRCU under low radiant cooling temperatures meet the comfort criteria of the ASHRAE Standard.
BUILDING AND ENVIRONMENT
(2021)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Eun-Sub Kim, Seok-Hwan Yun, Chae-Yeon Park, Han-Kyul Heo, Dong-Kun Lee
Summary: This study developed a method for estimating mean radiant temperature (MRT) in street canyons using Google Street View (GSV) images and analyzed its spatial patterns at a large scale. The proposed method was validated through regression analysis and showed good consistency with land surface temperature. The study provides valuable insights for understanding heat stress patterns at the street level.
Article
Ecology
Heejoon Choi, Youngkeun Song, Wanmo Kang, James H. Thorne, Wonkyong Song, Dong Kun Lee
Summary: This study examined the urban ecological network with the 3D structure of both green spaces and buildings, showing that building volumes and 8-10 m vegetation heights were highly correlated with species richness per unit area. The 3D connectivity analysis using LiDAR-derived variables revealed significant differences among urban forest patches, boulevards, and apartment complexes.
Article
Environmental Sciences
Deniz Erdem Okumus, Fatih Terzi
Summary: This study examines the cooling effects of cemeteries in Istanbul, a high-density metropolitan area with overheating issues. The research finds that cemeteries have significant cooling potential, with temperatures lower than the urban average. Planning small green patches is a practical and efficient way to regulate the thermal environment in Istanbul's urban neighborhoods.
Article
Environmental Studies
Karolina Zieba-Kulawik, Piotr Wezyk
Summary: Rapid urbanization is causing changes in green spaces and ecological connectivity. This study proposes a three-dimensional approach using LiDAR technology to measure urban forests and quantify the differences in vegetation structures. The results show the importance of considering vertical features in landscape analysis and provide insights into the distribution of green space in the urban environment.
Article
Biophysics
Jacob A. Lachapelle, E. Scott Krayenhoff, Ariane Middel, Samuel Meltzer, Ashley M. Broadbent, Matei Georgescu
Summary: This study developed a microscale three-dimensional urban radiation and energy balance model to simulate pedestrian radiation exposure and study heat-reducing interventions. The model accurately simulated radiation and surface temperature in different urban environments. Sensitivity simulations showed how changes in building height, tree cover, and street albedo can affect pedestrian heat exposure. The findings demonstrate the potential utility of the model for optimizing street design and reducing pedestrian heat exposure.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BIOMETEOROLOGY
(2022)
Article
Thermodynamics
Mehmet Furkan Ozbey, Cihan Turhan
Summary: Thermal comfort expresses satisfaction with the thermal environment and is influenced by personal and environmental parameters. The mean radiant temperature is a complex parameter that can be obtained using different methods. This study found that using assumptions or calculation methods to determine the mean radiant temperature results in significant errors.
THERMAL SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING PROGRESS
(2022)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Zhihui Mao, Zhuo Lu, Yanjie Wu, Lei Deng
Summary: This study explores the capability of 2D image-based texture and spectrum features in estimating the diameter at breast height (DBH) of individual trees. The results show that there is a strong correlation between texture features and DBH, and using texture features alone provides the highest accuracy in DBH estimation.
Article
Construction & Building Technology
Haiming Yu, Tao Zhang, Hiroatsu Fukuda, Xuan Ma
Summary: Regulating landscape configuration is an accepted strategy for mitigating urban thermal environment deterioration. However, there is a lack of studies on the thermal comfort of urban plazas, especially in winter and summer, and on how different strategies interact with each other. Using quantitative studies and regression analysis, this study fills these gaps by proposing 15 remodeled schemes of a typical urban plaza and providing simulations and analysis results for thermal environment conditions. The findings demonstrate the importance of water and greenery areas in improving summer thermal comfort, but also highlight the negative impact of excessive growth in these areas on winter thermal comfort.
BUILDING AND ENVIRONMENT
(2023)
Article
Construction & Building Technology
Marta Videras Rodriguez, Sergio Gomez Melgar, Jose Manuel Andujar Marquez
Summary: Urban public spaces play a crucial role in supporting social relationships and promoting a healthy lifestyle. However, over-urbanisation has led to increased urban heat stress and reduced public spaces. To improve thermal comfort in urban areas, this study introduces a new method using aerial thermography to assess radiant heat transfer. Surface temperatures captured by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with a thermal infrared device were used to estimate mean radiant temperature (TMRT). The accuracy of the proposed method was verified through a comparative analysis with a microclimate urban simulation. The results showed that aerial thermography is applicable for measuring radiant heat transfer, with high R2 values.
SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND SOCIETY
(2022)
Article
Construction & Building Technology
Xiaoxiong Xie, Zhiwen Luo, Sue Grimmond, Ting Sun, William Morrison
Summary: This study proposes a "spin-up" approach to update the external surface temperature of surrounding buildings, aiming to improve the accuracy of evaluating the energy and thermal performance of buildings. The experimental results show that neglecting the influence of the surroundings on buildings in dense urban areas can cause significant biases in critical indicators, especially in lower latitudes.
BUILDING AND ENVIRONMENT
(2022)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Wan Ting Katty Huang, Isobel Braithwaite, Andrew Charlton-Perez, Christophe Sarran, Ting Sun
Summary: The impact of climate change on seasonal temperature-related mortality is nonlinear. After a 2.5 degrees C increase in global warming, there is a significant increase in summer mean mortality risk, while minimal changes are expected at lower levels of warming. In contrast, by reaching a 2 degrees C global warming, there is already a 42% increase in mortality risk during summer heat extremes. Winter attributable mortalities are projected to decrease linearly with global warming in England and Wales.
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2022)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Hongqing Liu, Haiwei Yin, Fanhua Kong, Ariane Middel, Xiandi Zheng, Jing Huang, Tao Sun, Ding Wang, Itamar M. Lensky
Summary: The study demonstrates the importance of vegetation in protecting and maintaining the substrate of green roofs (GR), which helps to sustain their ecosystem services and improve their sustainability. Therefore, it is essential to pay attention to maintaining vegetation cover and regularly maintaining GR to ensure that ecological and economic benefits are not reduced.
SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT
(2022)
Article
Agronomy
Jing Huang, Fanhua Kong, Haiwei Yin, Ariane Middel, Hongqing Liu, Xiandi Zheng, Zhihao Wen, Ding Wang
Summary: Heatwaves have negative impacts on urban human life, but green spaces can mitigate these effects by shading and transpiration. This study quantitatively evaluated the transpirational cooling effect and physiological response of two pairs of trees commonly used for urban greening in Nanjing, China.
AGRICULTURAL AND FOREST METEOROLOGY
(2022)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Jiahui Liu, Ting Sun, Guangheng Ni
Summary: This study investigates the impact of irrigation on the atmospheric hydrological cycle in the Tarim Basin and highlights the potential threat to the sustainability of irrigated agriculture due to water scarcity. The findings show that a significant amount of irrigated water is transported through atmospheric processes, but future warming may result in water loss due to weakened wind regimes. Additionally, irrigation contributes to extreme rainfall events, with the southwestern Tarim Basin being a primary destination for irrigated water. The study emphasizes the urgency of addressing the sustainability of irrigated agriculture and local water resources in the face of impending global warming.
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2023)
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Yiming Wang, Fanhua Kong, Haiwei Yin, Jie Su, Hui Sun
Summary: This study proposes a systematic approach to identify and prioritize suitable building roofs for greening by integrating roof physical structure attributes and socio-ecological demands. In the central city of Nanjing, China, the suitable buildings for roof greening were determined based on building age, physical structure attributes, and other limited attributes. A comprehensive framework for assessing roof greening priority was developed by integrating building attributes and socio-ecological demands. The results provide valuable guidance for promoting green roof construction in Nanjing and the framework is applicable to other cities as well.
LANDSCAPE AND ECOLOGICAL ENGINEERING
(2023)
Article
Construction & Building Technology
Xiaoxiong Xie, Zhiwen Luo, Sue Grimmond, Ting Sun
Summary: This study combines SUEWS and EnergyPlus to predict natural ventilation potential (NVP) and cooling energy saving in urban neighborhoods in five Chinese cities. The findings show that the differences in NVP and cooling energy saving between urban and rural areas are climate- and season-dependent, with single-sided ventilation being as effective as cross ventilation in dense urban areas. Considering local or neighborhood-scale climate is important when evaluating NVP.
BUILDING AND ENVIRONMENT
(2023)
Article
Thermodynamics
Jing Huang, Fanhua Kong, Haiwei Yin, Ariane Middel, Hongqing Liu, Michael E. Meadows
Summary: Green roofs are effective tools for improving the thermal environment, saving energy, and combating climate change in cities. This study modeled and observed the energy balance of bare and green roofs, revealing differences in energy flows such as solar radiation absorption, convective energy reduction, and evapotranspiration. The findings highlight the significant impact of green roofs on the energy balance of urban building surfaces.
ENERGY CONVERSION AND MANAGEMENT
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Linying Wang, Ting Sun, Wenyu Zhou, Maofeng Liu, Dan Li
Summary: The sensitivity of urban canopy air temperature (T-a) to anthropogenic heat flux (Q(AH)) varies with space and time, but the exact factors controlling this variability remain unclear. To understand the contributions of different physical processes to this sensitivity, a forcing-feedback framework based on the energy budget of air within the urban canopy layer was developed and applied to simulate T-a/Q(AH) in the contiguous United States. The results showed that both direct and feedback effects play a role in this sensitivity, with the direct effect being dominant in summer and the feedback effect becoming stronger in winter due to weakened negative feedback associated with heat conductance.
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2023)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Mathew J. Lipson, Sue Grimmond, Martin Best, Gab Abramowitz, Andrew Coutts, Nigel Tapper, Jong-Jin Baik, Meiring Beyers, Lewis Blunn, Souhail Boussetta, Elie Bou-Zeid, Martin G. De Kauwe, Cecile de Munck, Matthias Demuzere, Simone Fatichi, Krzysztof Fortuniak, Beom-Soon Han, Margaret A. Hendry, Yukihiro Kikegawa, Hiroaki Kondo, Doo-Il Lee, Sang-Hyun Lee, Aude Lemonsu, Tiago Machado, Gabriele Manoli, Alberto Martilli, Valery Masson, Joe McNorton, Naika Meili, David Meyer, Kerry A. Nice, Keith W. Oleson, Seung-Bu Park, Michael Roth, Robert Schoetter, Andres Simon-Moral, Gert-Jan Steeneveld, Ting Sun, Yuya Takane, Marcus Thatcher, Aristofanis Tsiringakis, Mikhail Varentsov, Chenghao Wang, Zhi-Hua Wang, Andy J. Pitman
Summary: Accurately predicting weather and climate in cities is critical for safeguarding human health and strengthening urban resilience. In this study, we evaluated the ability of 30 land surface models to simulate surface energy fluxes critical to atmospheric meteorological and air quality simulations. The results showed improvement in predicting short-wave radiation, sensible and latent heat fluxes, but little or no improvement in long-wave radiation and momentum fluxes. Simple urban representation models performed well, while the most complex models did not perform as well.
QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY
(2023)
Review
Green & Sustainable Science & Technology
Taotao Tan, Fanhua Kong, Haiwei Yin, Lauren M. Cook, Ariane Middel, Shaoqi Yang
Summary: Green roofs can mitigate climate change through carbon sequestration, thermal process regulation, and building energy savings. However, it is still unclear how to quantify carbon dioxide reduction and design green roofs properly for optimal performance. This review summarizes the processes, factors, and quantitative methods for carbon dioxide reduction from peer-reviewed literature, aiming to advance research on designing and building green roofs as effective climate mitigation solutions in urban areas.
RENEWABLE & SUSTAINABLE ENERGY REVIEWS
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Ruidong Li, Ting Sun, Fuqiang Tian, Guang-Heng Ni
Summary: In this study, a deep-learning-based Python package called SHAFTS was developed to extract building height and footprint information from satellite imagery. Comparing with conventional machine learning and single-task deep learning models, multi-task deep learning models performed better in predicting building height and footprint, achieving higher coefficient of determination (R-2) compared to ML models. The DL models also reduced the error in high-value domain and improved the extraction of 3D building information in highly urbanized areas. Moreover, DL models showed similar improvement in overall performance and high-value prediction compared to existing state-of-the-art products. Within the DL family, multi-task deep learning models achieved higher accuracy in building height estimation, demonstrating the effectiveness of multi-task learning in this field.
GEOSCIENTIFIC MODEL DEVELOPMENT
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Hamidreza Omidvar, Ting Sun, Sue Grimmond, Dave Bilesbach, Andrew Black, Jiquan Chen, Zexia Duan, Zhiqiu Gao, Hiroki Iwata, Joseph P. McFadden
Summary: In order to compare the impact of surface-atmosphere exchanges between rural and urban areas, it is necessary to model fully vegetated areas commonly found near cities. This study provides a workflow to derive parameters for SUEWS, focusing on vegetation phenology, heat storage, and surface conductance. The results show that surface conductance plays a dominant role in the model's performance, suggesting the need for more accurate estimations of surface conductance parameters. The study evaluates the performance of SUEWS in simulating latent heat flux at 38 FLUXNET sites, and highlights the importance of capturing vegetation dynamics for accurate predictions.
GEOSCIENTIFIC MODEL DEVELOPMENT
(2022)
Article
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Ting Lian, Becky P. Y. Loo, Zhuangyuan Fan
Summary: This study proposes a new method for estimating pedestrian volume using bus dashcam videos and deep learning methods. The results show that pedestrian volumes calculated from these videos have better performance in explaining crash frequency compared to alternative measures.
COMPUTERS ENVIRONMENT AND URBAN SYSTEMS
(2024)
Article
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Joao Paulo Just Peixoto, Joao Carlos N. Bittencourt, Thiago C. Jesus, Daniel G. Costa, Paulo Portugal, Francisco Vasques
Summary: This article explores the use of multi-sensor Emergency Detection Units (EDUs) to improve urban emergency response. By leveraging data-driven approaches and geospatial data, the positioning of these units can be optimized. Additionally, the coverage area of existing networks is modeled, and the EDUs are fine-tuned based on connectivity requirements to enhance the effectiveness of emergency management systems.
COMPUTERS ENVIRONMENT AND URBAN SYSTEMS
(2024)
Article
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Congxiao Wang, Zuoqi Chen, Bailang Yu, Bin Wu, Ye Wei, Yuan Yuan, Shaoyang Liu, Yue Tu, Yangguang Li, Jianping Wu
Summary: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant changes in urban networks. By modifying the radiation model and using nighttime light data, researchers were able to measure directional urban networks during different scenarios. Results showed that the Shanghai lockdown reduced urban interactions between Shanghai and its surrounding cities while increasing interactions centered on peripheral cities in the Yangtze River Delta Region.
COMPUTERS ENVIRONMENT AND URBAN SYSTEMS
(2024)
Article
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Esteban Bopp, Johnny Douvinet, Noe Carles, Pierre Foulquier, Matthieu Peroche
Summary: This study investigates a cell broadcast trial conducted in Cannes, France, revealing the imprecision of cell broadcasting at the local level. The reception rates depend on telephone operators, and a large and irregular edge effect is observed, indicating that the message is broadcast beyond the official alert area.
COMPUTERS ENVIRONMENT AND URBAN SYSTEMS
(2024)
