Tropical cities are more susceptible to the suggested fall outs from projected global warming scenarios as they are located in the Torrid Zone and growing at rapid rates. Therefore, research on the mitigation of urban heat island (UHI) effects in tropical cities has attained much significance and increased immensely over recent years. The UHI mitigation strategies commonly used for temperate cities need to be examined in the tropical context since the mechanism of attaining a surface energy balance in the tropics is quite different from that in the mid-latitudes. The present paper evaluates the performance of four different mitigation strategies to counterbalance the impact of UHI phenomena for climate resilient adaptation in the Kolkata Metropolitan Area (KMA), India. This has been achieved by reproducing the study sites, selected from three different urban morphologies of open low-rise, compact low-rise and mid-rise residential areas, using ENVI-met V 4.0 and simulating the effects of different mitigation strategies- cool pavement, cool roof, added urban vegetation and cool city (a combination of the three former strategies), in reducing the UHI intensity. Simulation results show that at a diurnal scale during summer, the green city model performed best at neighborhood level to reduce air temperature (T) by 0.7 °C, 0.8 °C and 1.1 °C, whereas the cool city model was the most effective strategy to reduce physiologically equivalent temperature (PET) by 2.8° - 3.1 °C, 2.2° - 2.8 °C and 2.8° - 2.9 °C in the mid-rise, compact low-rise and open low-rise residential areas, respectively. It was observed that (for all the built environment types) vegetation played the most significant role in determining surface energy balance in the study area, compared to cool roofs and cool pavements. This study also finds that irrespective of building environments, tropical cities are less sensitive to the selected strategies of UHI mitigation than their temperate counter parts, which can be attributed to the difference in magnitude of urbanness.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.01.299 | DOI Listing |
Nat Hum Behav
December 2024
Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
Over the past decade, multidisciplinary research has seen the Amazon Basin go from a context perceived as unfavourable for food production and large-scale human societies to one of 'garden cities', domestication, and anthropogenically influenced forests and soils. Nevertheless, direct insights into human interactions with particular crops and especially animals remain scarce across this vast area. Here we present new stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data from 86 human and 68 animal remains dating between CE ~700 and 1400 from the Llanos de Mojos, Bolivia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFACS Omega
December 2024
Department of Energy Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400076, Maharashtra, India.
The cooling power of radiative cooling (RC) coatings depends not only on the radiative properties of the coating but also on environmental variables. In tropical environments, the cooling performance of RC coatings deteriorates due to high humidity and high solar radiation. Previous studies focused on developing high solar-reflective coatings to achieve subambient cooling in tropical environments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Monit Assess
December 2024
Laboratory of Ecology and Environmental Management, Science and Technology Advanced Institute, Van Lang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
The urban setting notwithstanding, rice cultivation prevails on the outskirts of Hanoi, with the burning of rice straw in the fields posing a significant challenge. Therefore, it is crucial to conduct spatial mapping of rice distribution, assess dry biomass, and determine emissions from rice straw burning within Hanoi city. The efficacy of the deep convolutional neural networks (DCNN) model has been evident in accurately mapping the spatial distribution of rice in Hanoi, where rice cultivation extensively thrives in suburban areas.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMC Cancer
December 2024
Centre for Medical Informatics, Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
Background: While breast cancer incidence rates in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are among the lowest worldwide, mortality rates remain among the highest, reflecting particularly poor survival. Only a few studies in SSA have investigated the capabilities of treatment services to adequately provide a continuum of care for breast cancer. Our aim was to assess the availability of diagnostic facilities and adjuvant therapies in hospitals performing breast cancer surgery in SSA.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Total Environ
December 2024
Future Cities Laboratory Global, Singapore-ETH Centre, Singapore; Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore. Electronic address:
In the face of global rising temperatures and excessive urban heat, developing effective heat mitigation strategies has become increasingly urgent. Street shade, a typical cooling shelter for urban dwellers, has been primarily investigated for outdoor thermal comfort but not extensively under extreme heat conditions. This study explores the cooling efficacy of diverse street shade types in mitigating urban heat, thereby facilitating cities and their residents' adaptation to climatic shifts.
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