Cooling for air temperature reduction or thermal comfort improvement? Simulations based on local characteristics

Rapid urbanization and built environment modification result in heat island effects which have severe impacts on energy and water consumption, human thermal comfort, public health, and work productivity. Incorporating cooling interventions into planning and design schemes during urban redevelopment and urban sprawl is increasingly important to achieve several sustainable development goals. However, implementation performance of different cooling interventions is always diverse given the differences in assessment indicators and application scenarios. This makes it difficult for urban planners and designers to make tangible decisions. Therefore, this study aims to i) investigate cooling performances of various cooling interventions in Chongqing, China with the judgement of air temperature reduction and -thermal comfort improvement, and ii) analyze the variations of cooling performance of cooling strategies in scenarios with different local topographical and morphological characteristics. The study was carried out based on the ENVI-met platform under extreme heat and normal conditions. Local characteristics presented in this study are built upon local climate zone, terrain, and building surface properties, and the numerical results show that cooling performances exhibit significant spatiotemporal variations. The cooling interventions were ranked based on both air temperature and physiological equivalent temperature, respectively, which can support the inverse urban planning and design for heat mitigation. Overall, this study develops a cooling performance table tailoring to cooling interventions and local characteristics for tangibly support urban planners and designers for implementation.