Canopy-scale Built-environment Characteristics and Urban Heat Island Effect in a Tropical Medium-sized City

Jou-Man Huang, Heui-Yung Chang, Liang-Chun Chen and Yu-Su Wang
Additional contact information
Jou-Man Huang: Department of Landscape Architecture, National Chiayi University, Chiayi City 600355, Taiwan
Heui-Yung Chang: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, National University of Kaohsiung, Kaohsiung City 81148, Taiwan
Liang-Chun Chen: Department of Landscape Architecture, National Chiayi University, Chiayi City 600355, Taiwan
Yu-Su Wang: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, National University of Kaohsiung, Kaohsiung City 81148, Taiwan

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 2, 1-17

Abstract: Previous studies have found that built-environment characteristics in large cities produce important effects of the urban heat island (UHI) and know the horizontal space affected by the urban canopy microclimate ranges from about 30–200 m, but there are few studies in medium-sized cities. Therefore, this study investigates canopy-scale built-environment characteristics and their correlation with urban heat island (UHI) effects in Chiayi city, a tropical, medium-sized city. Under a 100 m buffer size, 2D and 3D built-environment factors such as the green coverage ratio (GCR), building coverage ratio (BCR), floor area ratio (FAR), and sky view factor (SVF) were first analyzed and then correlated with the UHI effect. The analyses were repeated on 200 and 1000 m scales and compared to previous studies. It was found that the built-environment factors were more strongly correlated with UHI under the 200 m buffer. Moreover, 2D factors such as the GCR and BCR had a higher correlation with UHI, especially in developing medium-sized cities. Regarding the GCR, BCR, and FAR, as expected, the correlation coefficients with UHI increased to 0.4 at 13:00 during the day and changed from 0.2 to 0.4 at 00:30 at night, whereas the correlation between the SVF and UHI was greatly different from the study area or calculation methods. The scale effect and SVF calculation methods are recommended for further study.

Keywords: green coverage ratio (GCR); building coverage ratio (BCR); floor area ratio (FAR); sky view factor (SVF) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/2/868/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/2/868/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:2:p:868-:d:481660

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().