Urban sustainable development and color of cities

In this paper, an ongoing research on characterizing effects of increasing albedo (i.e. reflectivity) in urban areas is introduced. Using highly reflective colors (named Cool colors) for urban surfaces (e.g. roofs and pavements) increases albedo of urban areas. Urban climate modeling, as a multi-disciplinary field, is the essence of investigating the consequences of increasing albedo. Based on the reviewed literature, the air temperature decrease of about 2 K, from implementing cool surfaces, is estimated in tropical and moderate climate. As a result, annual energy saving is a certain effect of increasing albedo in considered regions. Furthermore, the peak ozone concentration of 8-hour average is also decreased by up to 15%. In spite of all efforts, there are some shortcomings in urban climate simulation that needs to be overcome. These limitations are discussed and related solutions are proposed

کلیدواژه ها:

cool materials ، urban heat island ، urban canopy model ، urban climate modeling