Efficient Structures of Forested Canyon in an Arid City to Mitigate the Urban Heat Island

M. ANGÉLICA RUIZ; M. BELÉN SOSA; ÉRICA N. CORREA; M. ALICIA CANTÓN

Venice

Conferencia; Third International Conference on Countermeasures to Urban Heat Island; 2014

Urban heat island (UHI) is a very important phenomenon that affects residential energy consumption, air quality and the degree of occupation of outdoor spaces, among others. This work focuses in the semi-arid city of Mendoza which is defined by its wide and tree-lined streets. Taking into account characteristics of the city is important to investigate deeply consequences of planning decisions implemented on urban climate. In this context, this research aims to define which urban variables significantly determine urban air temperature both during the day and night, and quantify the extent they do. For this purpose, a field survey and a measure campaign were conducted in 19 representative urban canyons. In addition, we have registered microclimatic variables during summer 2009-2010. The obtained data were processed by Principal Component Analysis and Multiple Linear Regressions. Two models and six morphological cases have been obtained. The results show that daytime air temperature is more sensitive to changes of urban variables than nighttime air temperature. Besides this, we have found that configurations without trees are the warmest ones both during day and night. In addition, low density schemes (H/W=0.2) are cooler than the high density ones (H/W=1.0), in the order of 4ºC in daytime. These results are useful to urban planners by allowing them determine strategies to a bioclimatic design of the city, from the thermal behavior?s point view.