Urban climate change in cold-climate cities of Canada is an important consideration for global climate moderation, energy consumption, citizen safety and wellbeing. Recently, many Canadian cities have started to pay attention to climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. They need policy-relevant data and analysis in these efforts. The current data mostly focuses on the consideration of greenhouse gas emissions levels rather than providing specific adaptation strategies on the urban scale. In this research, we analyze and demonstrate how street vegetation planting, albedo and urban canopy characteristics affect urban climate in a specific Canadian city, Montreal. We use ENVI-met (a three-dimensional computer model which analyzes micro-scale thermal interactions within urban environments) to calculate the sky view factor (SVF) for a 300 m x 300 m section of the city, and simulate the environmental conditions including air temperature (Ta), human weighted mean radiant temperature (MRTh-w), wind speed, and physiologically equivalent temperature (PET) at the community scale. These simulation comparisons demonstrate the effects on each environmental factor for a typical summer day and provide hints for mitigation of the urban heat island (UHI) and new urban development. The effectiveness of each UHI mitigation strategy is evaluated for providing guidelines for policy development. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Wang, YP; Akbari, H
Analysis of urban heat island phenomenon and mitigation solutions evaluation for Montreal
Sustainable Cities And Society