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.

The Urban Heat Island (UHI) is an area of growing interest for many people studying the urban environment and local/global climate change. The UHI has been scientifically studied for 200 years and, although it is an apparently simple phenomenon, there is considerable confusion around the different types of UHI and their assessment. The Urban Heat Island—A Guidebook provides simple instructions for measuring and analysing the phenomenon, as well as greater context for defining the UHI and the impacts it can have. Readers will be empowered to work within a set of guidelines that enable direct comparison of UHI effects across diverse settings, while informing a wide range of climate mitigation and adaptation programs to modify human behaviour and the built form. This opens the door to true global assessments of local climate change in cities. Urban planning and design strategies can then be evaluated for their effectiveness at mitigating these changes. Covers both on-surface and near-surface, or canopy, measurements and impacts of Urban Heat Islands (UHI) Provides a set of best practices and guidelines for UHI observation and analysis Includes both conceptual overviews and practical instructions for a wide range of uses

Adaptation Measures for Urban Heat Islands helps the reader understand the relative performance of these adaptation measures, methods and analysis relating to their creation and maintenance, evaluation methods, and the role of policy and governance in implementing them. A suite of case studies is included on these urban or metropolitan areas that are significantly warmer than their surrounding rural areas due to human activities. In recent years, a suite of adaptation measures have been developed to mitigate the urban heat island phenomena. Provides a range of concrete implementation methods Assesses relative performance of adaptation measures and countermeasure technologies Establishes methods for human thermal environmental interventions Reviews adaptation cities selected for excellent energy performance and thermal comfort indicators

Urban Climates is the first full synthesis of modern scientific and applied research on urban climates. The book begins with an outline of what constitutes an urban ecosystem. It develops a comprehensive terminology for the subject using scale and surface classification as key constructs. It explains the physical principles governing the creation of distinct urban climates, such as airflow around buildings, the heat island, precipitation modification and air pollution, and it then illustrates how this knowledge can be applied to moderate the undesirable consequences of urban development and help create more sustainable and resilient cities. With urban climate science now a fully-fledged field, this timely book fulfills the need to bring together the disparate parts of climate research on cities into a coherent framework. It is an ideal resource for students and researchers in fields such as climatology, urban hydrology, air quality, environmental engineering and urban design.

The eagerly-awaited follow-up to Sanibel Flats from the author the Tampa Tribune-Times calls "the rightful heir to John D. MacDonald". When Doc Ford's friend--the simplest and sweetest resident of Sanibel Island--is framed for murder, Doc heads to Florida's dark side to save him and the island from a rising tide of land-grab schemes, blood money, and violence. Martin's.

Urban Heat Island Modeling for Tropical Climates takes into account the different urban physics in tropical environments, presenting a way of UHI scaling for tropical cities. Topics include measuring, modeling and proper mitigation strategies, which account for the surface energy balance of tropics. Tropical cities are more susceptible to the effects of projected global warming because of conditions in tropical climates and the rapid growth of so many cities in this zone. The need for research on measuring, modeling and mitigation of UHI effects in tropical cities is of growing importance. This book walks through the basics of Urban Heat Islands, including causes, measurement and analysis then expands upon issues as well as the novel techniques that can be used to address issues specific to the region. Reviews topics related to understanding the fundamentals of modeling and impacts of urban heat islands Covers many techniques, from remote sensing, to numerical modeling and then applying them to urban climate studies in general, and in tropical cities Describes the scaling of urban heat islands based on long-term seasonal thermal parameters as feature-based classification systems using a probabilistic and fuzzy logic approach, unlike local climate zones (LCZs)

Conventional air conditioning is not a sustainable solution to the challenge of a hot or humid climate. The climate problem is compounded in so-called Urban Heat Islands, urban areas where the air can be 3–5°C hotter than its surrounding areas and where pollution levels are consequently raised. Including a colour section with thermal images and maps, this book explores the complex relationships between climate, buildings and plants, especially in urban heat islands. These relationships bear very critically on a range of environmental issues and point to some corresponding solutions. One chapter highlights some of the extensive research work carried out in Singapore, especially investigating the thermal benefits of greenery in buildings in the urban setting. Though several books have been written on urban heat islands, this work uniquely examines the linkages between climate, buildings and plants. It forms a reference for researchers and professionals such as architects, architectural science, landscape architects, building services engineers, urban planners and urban climatologists. It may also be useful for final year undergraduates or graduate students in these disciplines.