Green Infrastructure Assets in Urban Heat Island (GIAUrban)

The health of millions of people in cities globally is being significantly affected by increasing air temperature. This process, termed the Urban heat island (UHI) effect, could affect billions of people in the future if forecasted increases in population, urban migration and global warming are all realised. UHI effects are highly site specific therefore an assessment of potential mitigation strategies must be carried out using local research. There is therefore an urgent need for a low cost methodology for mitigating the effects of UHI effects. The use of vegetation in cities offers a potential solution as the vegetation provides shade and also as water evaporation not only cools the plants but the air around them. Use of vegetation, termed Green infrastructure assets (GIAs), therefore offer a potential low cost strategy for mitigation of UHI impacts and would significantly help improve the quality of life for urban citizens. There is however limited data available relating to the localised performance of GIAs in UHIs and even less of this type of data is available to the citizens adversely affected. This project seeks to apply a low-cost, flexible methodology that integrates a variety of novel imaging sensors with real-time environmental data to enable quantification of the effects of different GIA layouts. )