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Urban Climate Modeling and Assessment in Support of Sustainable Development

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Air, Climate Change and Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2018) | Viewed by 5148

Special Issue Editors

Environmental Systems Research Institute, 380 New York Street, Redlands, CA 92373, USA
Interests: urban environment; anthropogenic carbon emissions; urban climate; sustainable energy; GIScience
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Department of Physics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 15784 Athens, Greece
Interests: urban environment; air pollution; thermal environment in cities; climate change adaptation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
Interests: regional climate modeling; urban climate
1, "Henri Coandă" Air Force Academy, 500183 Brașov, Romania
2. National Meteorological Administration, 013686 Bucharest, Romania
Interests: urban climate; climate change and climate risks; biometeorology; historical meteorology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The intensification of human activities has significantly increased greenhouse gas emissions and anthropogenic heat discharge in urban areas. Urbanization, not only changes the spatiotemporal patterns of the urban thermal environment, but also has implications for regional and global climate. Renewable energy development, emissions reduction and heat island mitigation are key targets of urban sustainability policies. To accomplish these targets, further efforts should be made toward a better understanding of the urban climate and energy system at different scales. For example, at the local scale, more accurate estimation of the various components of the urban energy system, such as solar radiation, energy supply and energy consumption, can better support city-level energy planning and, at the regional scale, better quantification of the effects of land use/land cover (LUCC) change on the urban thermal environment, can facilitate high-level policy making.

Dr. Jianming Liang
Prof. Dr. Constantinos Cartalis
Prof. Dr. Lei Jiang
Dr. Sorin Cheval
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Urban climate
  • Urban energy
  • Urban metabolism
  • Urban fluxes
  • Urban heat island
  • Renewable energy
  • Greenhouse gas emissions
  • LUCC change

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

3548 KiB  
Article
Effects of Building Design Elements on Residential Thermal Environment
by Yingbao Yang, Xize Zhang, Xi Lu, Jia Hu, Xin Pan, Qin Zhu and Weizhong Su
Sustainability 2018, 10(1), 57; https://doi.org/10.3390/su10010057 - 28 Dec 2017
Cited by 31 | Viewed by 4483
Abstract
Residential thermal environment affects the life of residents in terms of their physical and mental health. Many studies have shown that building design elements affect the urban thermal environment. In this study, Nanjing City was used as the study area. A three-dimensional microclimate [...] Read more.
Residential thermal environment affects the life of residents in terms of their physical and mental health. Many studies have shown that building design elements affect the urban thermal environment. In this study, Nanjing City was used as the study area. A three-dimensional microclimate model was used to simulate and analyze the effects of four main factors, namely, building height, density, layout and green ratio, on thermal environment in residential areas. Results showed that 25% building density obtained a low average air temperature (ATa) and average predicted mean vote (APMV) during 24 h. Thus, a higher building height indicates a lower ATa and APMV and better outdoor comfort level. In addition, peripheral layout had the lowest ATa and APMV, followed by the determinant and point group layouts. The green ratio increased from 0% to 50% with a 10% step and the ATa and APMV decreased gradually. However, when the green ratio increased from 30% to 40%, ATa and APMV decreased most. The effects of building height, density and green ratio on the thermal environment in residential areas were interactive. The effects of building density, green ratio and layout on hourly air temperature and hourly predicted mean vote in daytime varied from these indicators during night time. How the four building design elements interact with thermal environment were probed from two aspects of air temperature and thermal comfort based on the validated ENVI-met, which is the element of novelty in this study. However, thermal comfort has rarely been considered in the past studies about urban outdoor thermal environment. Full article
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