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The effect of various urban design parameter in alleviating urban heat island and improving thermal health—a case study in a built pedestrianized block of China

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Abstract

Increasing urban heat island and global warming have aroused serious thermal environmental problems and even harm people’s thermal health. Because of the importance in people’s daily life, a commercial pedestrianized block represents a symbol of a city or metropolis; therefore, focusing the attention on the thermal environment in such regions is very necessary. Most of the researches on the urban thermal environment are calculated by remote sensing data; limited by the low spatial resolution of remote sensing image, it may not obviously reflect the true thermal environment of the research site, especially in some microscale regions. Based on this, the new software ENVI-met is developed to research the thermal environment and forecast people’s thermal sensation in a microscale region. Therefore, the objective of this study aims at conducting field measurement and numerical simulation to assess the thermal environment of a typical commercial pedestrianized space in southern China and assess the different urban design parameters in ameliorating the urban heat island effect. Our final results demonstrate a quantitative evidence for establishing a comprehensive standard for improving the thermal environment in a microscale region, and this study also can be a supplementary in the research field about improving thermal health.

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Data availability

The datasets used or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This research was also supported by Huang Jin Zhi Engineering Education Development Foundation of Shanghai.

Funding

This research is supported by the resilient urban and rural system planning theory and practice construction system adapting to climate change (2020TD-029), the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China under the project No. 2013FY112500, National Natural Science Foundation of China (51678058), the 13th Five-Year National S&T Pillar Program Key Projects Subtopics (2016YFC0700401–01), study on the mechanism and planning regulation of urban space structure affecting wind environment, Shanxi National Science Foundation (No. 2019JM-475), Science and Technology Project of Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and Research on Key Technologies Policy Gradient Improvement of Farm House Energy Efficiency in Northern China (No.2019-R-033).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Architecture, Chang’an University, Xi’an, China

    Xuan Ma, Lei Zhang, Mi Guo & Jingyuan Zhao

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  1. Xuan Ma
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  2. Lei Zhang
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  3. Mi Guo
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Contributions

Conceptualization, Jingyuan Zhao; methodology, Xuan Ma; software, Zhi Cheng; validation, Xuan Ma and Lei Zhang; formal analysis, Lei Zhang; investigation, Lei Zhang and Xuan Ma; resources, Jingyuan Zhao; data curation, Xuan Ma; writing—original draft preparation, Xuan Ma and Lei Zhang; writing—review and editing, Mi Guo; visualization, Xuan Ma; supervision, Jingyuan Zhao; project administration, Jingyuan Zhao; funding acquisition, Jingyuan Zhao.

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Correspondence to Jingyuan Zhao.

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Ma, X., Zhang, L., Guo, M. et al. The effect of various urban design parameter in alleviating urban heat island and improving thermal health—a case study in a built pedestrianized block of China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 38406–38425 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13179-z

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