Urban Heat Island

The urban heat island (UHI) is a microclimatic phenomenon that occurs in the metropolitan areas. It consists in a significant increasing of the temperature in the urban area respect to the surrounding peri-urban and rural neighbourhoods. This phenomenon is known and studied since eighties and is caused by:

- physical characteristics of the surfaces: because of the thermal and radioactive proprieties of the materials

composing urban surfaces, such as concrete and asphalt, that absorb rather than reflecting solar radiations;

- lack of natural evaporative surfaces (vegetation) that, in rural areas, contribute to maintain a stable energy

balance;

- augmentation of the vertical surface that both provide an increased surface absorbing and reflecting solar radiation

as well as block winds that could contribute to the lowering of the temperature (canyon effect);

- human activities that mainly consists in heat produced by hating and cooling plants, industrial activities, vehicles,

etc.;

- high level of pollutants that alter the radioactive proprieties of the atmosphere.

 

The intensity of UHI phenomenon raises proportionally to the dimension and population of the urban area;

consequently, it is doomed to become more severe in the coming years due to the constant growing of number of

people living in urban areas. The UHI effects are directly related to (and worsened by) the climate change

phenomena, where it is expected that an increase of the average temperature has a stronger and immediate effect

on the health of people living in cities, and particularly in weak categories (diseased and aged citizens, etc.)

 

UHI Project is developed in 8 of the most relevant metropolitan areas and MEGAs (Mega Urban Regions) of Central Europe cooperation programme:
- the metropolitan cluster of Bologna – Modena (IT)
- the urban corridor of Venice – Padua (IT)
- Wien (AT)
- Stuttgard (D)
- Lodz & Warsaw (PL)
- Ljubljana (SI)
- Budapest (HU)
- Prague (CZ)
 

UHI Project wants to boost transnational discussion among policy makers, local administrators and professionals that will bring to developing policies and actions for preventing, adapting and mitigating the natural and man-made risks arising from the UHI phenomenon.
In particular, the project intends to:

- Provide a deeper knowledge on the man-made risk of the UHI and its interactions with global climate change

- Establish a permanent transnational network for monitoring the phenomenon and its development

- Set up suitable strategies for the mitigation of- and the adaptation to UHI

- Improve current land-use planning tools and civil management systems according to mitigation and adaptation strategies

 

Project's website: www.eu-uhi.eu