Urban temperature analysis and impact on the building cooling energy performances: an Italian case study

Michele Zinzi, Carlo Romeo, Emiliano Carnielo, Alessandro Mangione

Abstract


Climate changes and urban sprawl are dramatically increasing the heat island effect in urban environments, whatever the size and the latitude are, affecting these latter parameters the effect intensity. The urban heats island is a phenomenon observed since the last decades of the XIX century but demonstrated at large scale only one century later, characterised by the increase of air temperature in densely built urban environments respect to the countryside surround cities. Many studies are available, showing urban heat island intensities up to 12°C. This thermal stress causes social, health and environmental hazards, with major consequences on weaker social classes, as elderly and low income people, it is not by chance that survey demonstrated the increase of deaths in such categories during intense and extended heat waves. This study presents the firs results on the observation of air temperature measures in different spots of Rome, city characterised by a typical Mediterranean climate and by a complex urban texture, in which densely built areas are kept separated by relatively green or not-built zones. Six spots are monitored since June 2014 and include: historical city centre, semi-central zones with different construction typologies, surrounding areas again with various urban and building designs. The paper is focused on the analysis of summer temperature profiles, increase respect to the temperature outside the cities and the impact on the cooling performance of buildings. Temperature datasets and a reference building model were inputted into the well-known and calibrated dynamic tool TRNSYS. Cooling net energy demand of the reference building was calculated, as well as the operative temperature evolution in the not cooled building configuration. The results of calculation allow to compare the energy and thermal performances in the urban environment respect to the reference conditions, usually adopted by building codes. Advice and recommendation of suitable technologies to mitigate such conditions are finally given.


Keywords


Urban temperature; building cooling energy performances; thermal comfort.

Full Text:

PDF

References


IPCC, Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report.Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, R. K. Pachauri, and A. Reisinger, (eds.)], IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, 104 pp.

IPCC, 2014: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Edenhofer, O., R. Pichs-Madruga, Y. Sokona, E. Farahani, S. Kadner, K. Seyboth, A. Adler, I. Baum, S. Brunner, P. Eickemeier, B. Kriemann, J. Savolainen, S. Schlömer, C. von Stechow, T. Zwickel and J. C. Minx (eds.) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

Plan Bleu, “Climate change and energy in the Mediterranean Plan Bleu - Regional Activity Center, Sophia Antipolis, July 2008.

T. R. Oke, G. T. Johnson, D. G. Steyn, and I. D. Watson, “Simulation of surface urban heat islands under ‘” ‘ideal’ conditions at night: Part 2. Diagnosis of causation, Boundary Layer Meteorol. 56, 1991,pp. 339–358.

M. Santamouris (Ed.), Energy and Climate in the Urban Built Environment, London, James and James Science Publishers, 2001.

D. Stewart, “A systematic review and scientific critique of methodology in modern urban heat island literature”, International Journal of Climatology, Special Issue: ICUC-7 Urban Climate Meeting 2011, 31(2), pp. 200–217.

D. K. Papanastasiou, and C. Kittas, “Maximum urban heat island intensity in a medium-sized coastal Mediterranean city,” Theoretical and

Applied Climatology, 107 (3–4) , 2012, pp. 407–416.

P. Coseo, and L. Larsen, “How factors of land use/land cover, building configuration, and adjacent heat sources and sinks explain urban heat islands in Chicago”, Landscape and Urban Planning, Vol. 125, May 2014, pp. 117-129.

M. Kolokotroni, X. Ren, M. Davies, and A. Mavrogianni, “London’s urban heat island: impact on current and future energy consumption in office buildings”, Energy and Buildings, 47, 2012, pp. 302–311.

H. Akbari, and S. Konopacki, “Energy effects of heat-island reduction strategies in Toronto, Canada”, Energy and Buildings, 29, 2004, pp. 191–210.

M. Santamouris, N. Papanikolaou, I. Livada, I. Koronakis, C. Georgakis, A. Argiriou, and D. N. Assimakopoulos, “On the impact of urban climate to the energy consumption of buildings”, Solar Energy, 70 (3), 2001, pp. 201–216.

E. Carnielo, and M. Zinzi, “Optical and thermal characterisation of cool asphalts to mitigate urban temperatures and building cooling demand”, Building and Environment, 60, 2013, pp. 56–65.

TRNSYS 16; www.trnsys.com.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21622/resd.2016.02.1.045

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2016 Michele Zinzi, Carlo Romeo, Emiliano Carnielo, Alessandro Mangione

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.


Renewable Energy and Sustainable Development

E-ISSN: 2356-8569

P-ISSN: 2356-8518

 

Published by:

Academy Publishing Center (APC)

Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT)

Alexandria, Egypt

resd@aast.edu