TY - GEN
T1 - Feasibility of Using Green Roofs and Cool Roofs for Extreme Heat Mitigation in Melbourne, Australia
AU - Herath, Prabhasri
AU - Thatcher, Marcus
AU - Jin, Huidong
AU - Bai, Xuemei
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.
PY - 2024/11
Y1 - 2024/11
N2 - Heatwaves pose undesirable consequences to human health as a ‘silent killer’ and penalise the environmental, economic and social aspects. Future heatwaves are predicted to be more severe, longer and more frequent. Over the past decade, Melbourne, Australia, has experienced three notable summer heatwaves. This study presents a simulational experiment in Melbourne’s central business district for the 2014 heatwave, using ‘The Air Pollution Model’, a mesoscale urban climate model. The study evaluated the effectiveness of green and cool roofs as heat mitigation strategies, considering various scenarios that balanced their occupancy on city rooftops, with a maximum 50:50 combination. Temperature data for heatwave days, including average (Tave), maximum (Tmax), and minimum (Tmin) temperatures, were compared to the average seasonal summer temperatures. The results showed that heatwave temperatures exceeded seasonal averages significantly, with Tmax exceeding by 16.1 °C and Tmin and Tave by 5.8 °C and 12.5 °C, respectively. The temperature reduction behaviour of scenarios during heatwaves proved scenario d5 with 25% green roofs and 75% cool roofs with 0.7 albedo to be the best performance for Tmax with the highest reduction. For Tmin and Tave, d8, a scenario with 50:50 green and cool roofs (0.7 albedo) offered the best heat reduction. Moreover, d8 recorded the best reduction for the total average air temperature and apparent temperature, a measurement used to evaluate human thermal comfort. The combined scenarios exhibited complementary cooling potential for multiple heat indices, surpassing the individual effectiveness of either green or cool roofs for heat mitigation in Melbourne. Therefore, wise utilisation of total roof area by integrating both green and cool roofs in urban planning can offer a resource-efficient, cost-effective, and realistic strategy, making them a promising solution for addressing the challenges posed by rising heatwaves in urban areas.
AB - Heatwaves pose undesirable consequences to human health as a ‘silent killer’ and penalise the environmental, economic and social aspects. Future heatwaves are predicted to be more severe, longer and more frequent. Over the past decade, Melbourne, Australia, has experienced three notable summer heatwaves. This study presents a simulational experiment in Melbourne’s central business district for the 2014 heatwave, using ‘The Air Pollution Model’, a mesoscale urban climate model. The study evaluated the effectiveness of green and cool roofs as heat mitigation strategies, considering various scenarios that balanced their occupancy on city rooftops, with a maximum 50:50 combination. Temperature data for heatwave days, including average (Tave), maximum (Tmax), and minimum (Tmin) temperatures, were compared to the average seasonal summer temperatures. The results showed that heatwave temperatures exceeded seasonal averages significantly, with Tmax exceeding by 16.1 °C and Tmin and Tave by 5.8 °C and 12.5 °C, respectively. The temperature reduction behaviour of scenarios during heatwaves proved scenario d5 with 25% green roofs and 75% cool roofs with 0.7 albedo to be the best performance for Tmax with the highest reduction. For Tmin and Tave, d8, a scenario with 50:50 green and cool roofs (0.7 albedo) offered the best heat reduction. Moreover, d8 recorded the best reduction for the total average air temperature and apparent temperature, a measurement used to evaluate human thermal comfort. The combined scenarios exhibited complementary cooling potential for multiple heat indices, surpassing the individual effectiveness of either green or cool roofs for heat mitigation in Melbourne. Therefore, wise utilisation of total roof area by integrating both green and cool roofs in urban planning can offer a resource-efficient, cost-effective, and realistic strategy, making them a promising solution for addressing the challenges posed by rising heatwaves in urban areas.
KW - Cool roofs
KW - Green roofs
KW - Heat mitigation
KW - Heatwaves
KW - TAPM
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85211336237&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-031-63203-7_14
DO - 10.1007/978-3-031-63203-7_14
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85211336237
SN - 9783031632020
T3 - Advances in Science, Technology and Innovation
SP - 185
EP - 193
BT - Integrating Resiliency into Future Sustainable Cities
A2 - Shamout, Sameh
A2 - Bradbury, Matthew
A2 - Patel, Yusef
A2 - McPherson, Peter
A2 - Altan, Hasim
PB - Springer Nature
T2 - 5th International Conference on Resilient and Responsible Architecture and Urbanism, RRAU 2023
Y2 - 20 April 2023 through 22 April 2023
ER -