Practical guidelines to resilient urban planning against heat stress
Short description
The impact of climate change on urban areas and its consequences for humans is an urgent research topic. Heat waves are becoming more severe and frequent - also in the Nordic countries. The growing urban population leads to densified urban areas, higher fraction of paved surfaces and rising urban air temperatures, enhancing the effect of human exposure to heat. Urban planning measures to reduce health risks from heat waves are economically beneficial and contribute to more sustainable urban development.
Best practice
The purpose of the project is to contribute to knowledge and best-practice methods regarding climate adaptation to heat stress focusing on Nordic conditions developing user friendly guidelines for design strategies and measures to increase urban area resilience to high temperatures.
Method
The project will focus on planning issues in urban development focusing on outdoor as well as indoor measures to mitigate summer heat stress. For outdoor conditions, measures include e.g. different building structures and usage of blue-green infrastructure. Regarding indoor conditions, size and position of windows have a great impact. Both outdoor and indoor conditions contribute to human heat stress but are rarely dealt with in combination. A major focus will therefore be combined evaluations of joint indoor/outdoor measures identifying efficient combinations to
mitigating summer heat stress. Furthermore, since economic considerations play a major role in urban planning and building, an economic analysis will be conducted for different combinations of measures to guide the decision process towards desired solutions, also from a cost-benefit perspective.