Heat Wave Resilience at Urban Climate Scale (2 CPD Pts)

Event Synopsis

Lecture 01
Understanding Urban Climate with Physics Modelling

Over the last decades, the impact of climate change on the urban climate and performance of buildings has been of increasing interest. The lecture will present the studies exploring the impact of climate change on the urban heat island (UHI) effect for different cities over the world. It would also detail a multiscale approach to studying UHI, ranging from city scale to local urban scale using coupled meteorological and urban microclimate models. The urban microclimate model, developed by the authors, includes CFD modelling of turbulent airflow due to wind and buoyancy effects, coupled heat and moisture transport in the air domain and in the porous domain of urban materials, shortwave and longwave radiative exchanges between urban surfaces and the sky and vegetation. The lecture would later present different mitigation scenarios for urban overheating during heatwaves, using vegetation, water spraying and enhanced night ventilation for neighborhoods undergoing densification.

Lecture By Prof. Jan Carmeliet

Since June 2008, Jan Carmeliet is full professor at the Chair of Building Physics at the department of Mechanical Engineering at ETH Zürich Switzerland.

Jan Carmeliet, graduated from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven) and has been Professor at K.U.Leuven since 1998 and part-time Professor at T.U.Eindhoven. He was in 2007 on sabbatical leave at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and at Los Alamos Governmental Laboratories. His research resulted in more than 330 scientific journal papers.

His research interests concern urban climate and urban heat island mitigation, multiscale behaviour of porous materials and their fluid interactions, and multi-energy decentralized systems at building and urban scale.

He was research councillor of the National Science Foundation Switzerland and expert of the Swiss Innovation Agency (InnoSuisse). He was director of the graduate program ‘Master Integrated Building Systems’ at ETHZ. He was member of the research commission of ETH Zürich, the scientific commission of the CCEM (Centre of Competence Energy and Mobility) and the Board of Energy Science Centre ETH Zürich. He plaid a very active role in acquiring and organizing the SCCER (Swiss competence centre energy research) FEEB&D (Future energy efficient buildings and districts).

Lecture 02
Understanding the role of trees and Urban Parks in the Urban Climate

The increase in urban heat islands, amplified by climate change, affects not only humans but also the entire built environment. As the built environment contains materials that absorb more heat than nature, cities do not cool down sufficiently at night, unlike natural environments. This situation is exacerbated during heat waves, a phenomenon that is clearly increasing. Vegetation, such as street trees, grassy areas and even balcony and roof plants, plays a role in regulating outdoor urban conditions. Trees are modeled as porous media, sheltering wind flow, providing shadowing and radiative exchange, including transpirative cooling based on plant physiology. The lecture aims to elucidate the impact of plants and develop shading and evaporation systems that are inspired by plants.

Lecture by Prof. Dominique Derome

Dominique Derome is professor at the Department of Civil and Building engineering, Université de Sherbrooke, Canada, and holds a Canada Research Chair tier 1 in Multiscale Building Physics.

She looks at heat and mass transfer processes in the built environment, the related impacts on durability of materials (namely wood) and on thermal comfort and its inhabitants. Her research proposes innovative and multiscale approaches of the highly coupled physical processes that occur in the built environment, intensively integrating advanced computational and experimental methods. This multidisciplinary research leads to solutions developed for a sustainable living environment, resilient in the face of climate change, possible higher risks of heat waves and impacts on the urban environment.

Her research led to more than 180 journal papers. Previously she was for 11 years senior scientist in Switzerland and 10 years professor at Concordia University, Canada. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Building Physics.