Study of the urban heat island in Lecce (Italy) by means of ADMS and ENVI-MET

The urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon may produce several cascade effects on citizens’ health, energy consumption and air quality. Numerical modelling is recognised to be a powerful tool for the analysis of the UHI, although the question of which model to use (as implied in the ‘fit-for-purpose’ approach) much depends on the application and on the result of satisfactory validation against field measurements. In this paper, two different modelling approaches are applied, namely the integral-semi-Gaussian model ADMS-TH and the CFD-based model ENVI-met, to assess the UHI phenomenon in a city of south Italy (Lecce). Modelling results are validated against field measurements collected during summer 2012. The results suggest that the integral model has the ability of capturing the UHI cycle at city scale, while CFD modelling did not provide any substantial improvements in terms of local geometric effects on temperature distribution.

[1]  D. Leung,et al.  A review on the generation, determination and mitigation of urban heat island. , 2008, Journal of environmental sciences.

[2]  F. Haghighat,et al.  Approaches to study Urban Heat Island – Abilities and limitations , 2010 .

[3]  Mats Sandberg,et al.  City breathability and its link to pollutant concentration distribution within urban-like geometries , 2010 .

[4]  Sylvia I. Bohnenstengel,et al.  Implications of climate change for expanding cities worldwide , 2013 .

[5]  Jörg Franke,et al.  COST 732 in practice: the MUST model evaluation exercise , 2011 .

[6]  J. Monteith,et al.  Boundary Layer Climates. , 1979 .

[7]  H. Fernando,et al.  Urban heat islands in humid and arid climates: role of urban form and thermal properties in Colombo, Sri Lanka and Phoenix, USA , 2007 .

[8]  A. Rosenfeld,et al.  COOL COMMUNITIES: STRATEGIES FOR HEAT ISLAND MITIGATION AND SMOG REDUCTION , 1998 .

[9]  M. Bruse,et al.  Simulating surface–plant–air interactions inside urban environments with a three dimensional numerical model , 1998 .

[10]  H. Mayer,et al.  Numerical study on the effects of aspect ratio and orientation of an urban street canyon on outdoor thermal comfort in hot and dry climate , 2006 .

[11]  E. Johansson,et al.  Urban shading—a design option for the tropics? A study in Colombo, Sri Lanka , 2007 .

[12]  Rex Britter,et al.  Construction of Digital Elevation Models for a Southern European City and a Comparative Morphological Analysis with Respect to Northern European and North American Cities , 2010 .

[13]  H. Akbari,et al.  Energy savings for heat-island reduction strategies in Chicago and Houston (including updates for Baton Rouge, Sacramento, and Salt Lake City) , 2002 .