Towards the next generation of green building for urban heat island mitigation: Zero UHI impact building

Abstract

Abstract At present, cities are under the threats of global warming and urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon, where buildings are an important cause and also the sufferer of urban overheating. Therefore, building, especially the green building (GB), is predominantly provisioned to address the increasing energy consumption and carbon emissions in response to climate change, while to our best knowledge, it has been scarcely requested for UHI mitigation (UHIM). Therefore, this paper proposes the concept of GB-based UHIM system, or ‘zero UHI impact building’, or ‘zero-heat building’ or ‘microclimate neutral building’, aiming to achieve the zero-heat impact on surrounding environments through reasonably designing and operating buildings, or depending on innovative techniques to eliminate the excessive heats, on the basis of GB’s goals. In specific, this paper defines the boundary of the GB-based UHIM system, analyzes the interactions between building and urban heat fluxes, and the factors that may affect the use of UHIM techniques on building components. The potentials to establish the GB-based UHIM system are further analyzed in aspects of the UHI impacts on the GB benefits and the principle for heat mitigation. Moreover, the pathway to GB-based UHIM system implementation is further elaborated and suggestions for future direction and work are given. Overall, this paper presents the theoretical and practical foundation for the establishment of GB-based UHIM system and it is a significant move of building sector in response to the temperature increase.