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An Evidence-Based Review of Impacts, Strategies and Tools to Mitigate Urban Heat Islands

The impacts of climate changes on cities, which are home to over half of the world’s population, are already being felt. In many cases, the intensive speed with which urban centres have been growing means that little attention has been paid to the role played by climatic factors in maintaining quali...

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Autores principales: Leal Filho, Walter, Echevarria Icaza, Leyre, Emanche, Victoria Omeche, Quasem Al-Amin, Abul
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5751017/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29257100
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14121600
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author Leal Filho, Walter
Echevarria Icaza, Leyre
Emanche, Victoria Omeche
Quasem Al-Amin, Abul
author_facet Leal Filho, Walter
Echevarria Icaza, Leyre
Emanche, Victoria Omeche
Quasem Al-Amin, Abul
author_sort Leal Filho, Walter
collection PubMed
description The impacts of climate changes on cities, which are home to over half of the world’s population, are already being felt. In many cases, the intensive speed with which urban centres have been growing means that little attention has been paid to the role played by climatic factors in maintaining quality of life. Among the negative consequences of rapid city growth is the expansion of the problems posed by urban heat islands (UHIs), defined as areas in a city that are much warmer than other sites, especially in comparison with rural areas. This paper analyses the consistency of the UHI-related literature in three stages: first it outlines its characteristics and impacts in a wide variety of cities around the world, which poses pressures to public health in many different countries. Then it introduces strategies which may be employed in order to reduce its effects, and finally it analyses available tools to systematize the initial high level assessment of the phenomenon for multidisciplinary teams involved in the urban planning process. The analysis of literature on the characteristics, impacts, strategies and digital tools to assess on the UHI, reveals the wide variety of parameters, methods, tools and strategies analysed and suggested in the different studies, which does not always allow to compare or standardize the diagnosis or solutions.
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spelling pubmed-57510172018-01-10 An Evidence-Based Review of Impacts, Strategies and Tools to Mitigate Urban Heat Islands Leal Filho, Walter Echevarria Icaza, Leyre Emanche, Victoria Omeche Quasem Al-Amin, Abul Int J Environ Res Public Health Article The impacts of climate changes on cities, which are home to over half of the world’s population, are already being felt. In many cases, the intensive speed with which urban centres have been growing means that little attention has been paid to the role played by climatic factors in maintaining quality of life. Among the negative consequences of rapid city growth is the expansion of the problems posed by urban heat islands (UHIs), defined as areas in a city that are much warmer than other sites, especially in comparison with rural areas. This paper analyses the consistency of the UHI-related literature in three stages: first it outlines its characteristics and impacts in a wide variety of cities around the world, which poses pressures to public health in many different countries. Then it introduces strategies which may be employed in order to reduce its effects, and finally it analyses available tools to systematize the initial high level assessment of the phenomenon for multidisciplinary teams involved in the urban planning process. The analysis of literature on the characteristics, impacts, strategies and digital tools to assess on the UHI, reveals the wide variety of parameters, methods, tools and strategies analysed and suggested in the different studies, which does not always allow to compare or standardize the diagnosis or solutions. MDPI 2017-12-19 2017-12 /pmc/articles/PMC5751017/ /pubmed/29257100 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14121600 Text en © 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Leal Filho, Walter
Echevarria Icaza, Leyre
Emanche, Victoria Omeche
Quasem Al-Amin, Abul
An Evidence-Based Review of Impacts, Strategies and Tools to Mitigate Urban Heat Islands
title An Evidence-Based Review of Impacts, Strategies and Tools to Mitigate Urban Heat Islands
title_full An Evidence-Based Review of Impacts, Strategies and Tools to Mitigate Urban Heat Islands
title_fullStr An Evidence-Based Review of Impacts, Strategies and Tools to Mitigate Urban Heat Islands
title_full_unstemmed An Evidence-Based Review of Impacts, Strategies and Tools to Mitigate Urban Heat Islands
title_short An Evidence-Based Review of Impacts, Strategies and Tools to Mitigate Urban Heat Islands
title_sort evidence-based review of impacts, strategies and tools to mitigate urban heat islands
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5751017/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29257100
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14121600
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