海角视频

Flooding. Droughts. Rising sea levels. Changing ecosystems. And, of course, rising temperatures. We live amongst multiple and simultaneous climate crises, and one of the most impactful consequences of the change in our climate is the increase in record-breaking heat.

A multi-faceted array of people, places and systems are affected by extreme heat. That means that the approach to battle it must also be multi-faceted; ongoing mitigation against the climate crisis, as well as interventions and practical measures at building level and citywide/urban planning level.

The extreme heat we see, especially in cities, is not going away anytime soon. For those of us in the built environment, the question is: how can we make a meaningful difference through our work? What work can we do to mitigate the climate crisis that causes rising temperatures? And how can we support cities adapt and become resilient to heatwaves?

Here, learn from a range of 海角视频 experts on the diverse work they are doing to create solutions and mould the built environment to cope with extreme heat, and the holistic considerations we must have to deal with this dangerous impact of the climate crisis.

Tom Newby on structural engineering and building level interventions

Tom is a director at 海角视频; he leads the structural engineering team in London.

鈥淭here is a globally acknowledged right to water, but there isn’t really a globally acknowledged right to a liveable temperature. With the climate crisis, we’re heading into a situation where people are going to be facing unliveable temperatures in some parts of the world. This includes the UK facing very uncomfortable temperatures that sometimes may veer into the unliveable territory for the vulnerable members of our society.

鈥淚n cities and urban spaces, a critical mitigation is the provision of shade. Materials that reflect solar radiation or low emissivity materials can be chosen, and the planting of trees and other greenery is vital.

“These interventions at plot level can expand to shading people鈥檚 homes, too. Already in the UK the new Part O of the building regulations puts limits on overheating in homes, and as a result we are going to start seeing more buildings with shading built-in, including awnings or shutters on windows.”

鈥淭here are existing ways to get us to the position of all having a home that provides an acceptable temperature. These are things that we need to be looking at more. Passive design is our friend, meaning we can design buildings to use minimal amounts of energy and still achieve a good, liveable environment.

鈥淭hat means orientating buildings correctly. It means choosing what colour they are, how much light is let in, appropriate levels of shading and insulating them properly. All of those are things that use no energy once they’re in place 鈥� and this is important, because there are boundaries on how much low carbon electricity that we’ll be able to produce, at least in the near future.鈥�

Sabrina Bornstein on city level interventions

Sabrina is a principal in our Los Angeles office and is climate action and resilience lead for US Advisory.

鈥淭here are a number of physical urban heat island mitigation strategies in cities 鈥� think things like cool pavements, cool roofs, tree planting and park areas, and more permeable/less grey surfaces. Passive design choices apply as much in the urban public realm as they do to individual buildings.

“For example, I鈥檓 in LA, and something that has received attention recently is the idea of climate resilient bus shelters, to ensure people have shade access while they are waiting for public transit. Similar is the idea of 鈥榗ool corridors鈥� for streets that can provide shade and connect pedestrians to cool resources, bringing a lot of these ideas together.”

鈥淲e need to support indoor thermal comfort too, in addition to outside. Some cities are considering what the maximum indoor temperature should be and requiring that buildings provide a level of indoor thermal comfort and safety to residents.

“As with many problems, considering organised networks and systems that can respond to heatwaves is important. I feel there is room for innovation around access to cooling resources; can cities partner with museums or movie theatres to allow free or discounted entry during heatwaves? Should we prioritise connecting our public transit to cool resources to help move people t to those places during extreme heat?

鈥淚n my area of work, climate vulnerability assessments are important; we must identify and understand which people, places and systems are the most vulnerable to the impacts of rising temperatures and to inform adaptation strategies and pathways.鈥�

Lara Balazs on building design and energy management

Lara is an associate in our cities energy team, based in Leeds.

鈥淔rom a building intervention perspective, we can look to the past, in the architecture of places like the Middle East and North Africa, to see the way they used water, shading and thermal mass to ensure that they were keeping a comfortable environment inside their buildings. Effective material choice, with materials that have high level of thermal mass, means that heat from the sun is absorbed during the daytime to reduce peak internal temperatures.

鈥淪ome of the building stock we have today is problematic. The UK, for example, has some of the worst insulated building stock in Europe. We lose heat from our buildings and gain heat in heatwaves at a much faster rate than a more insulated building would. We also typically don鈥檛 have a lot of shading on our windows, and our buildings often have a high glazing ratio with lots of solar gains into the space. There are lots of ways that we can adapt to that 鈥� for example, using cross ventilation.”

鈥淲hen it comes to energy management in cooling practices during times of extreme heat, we can look to using district cooling networks (pipes running under the streets, connecting up buildings all into one network) with chilled water or an ambient loop, which does both heating and cooling.

“With an ambient loop, is possible to take heat out of a building (thereby cooling it) and put that rejected heat to other uses in the network. Being able to simultaneously heat and cool, and recover the heat from those different processes all back into the same network, can be a really efficient thing to do.鈥�

Erida Bendo on computational engineering and urban heat action plans

Erida is a computational climate consultant in Berlin. Her work involves developing and testing different computational workflows, mainly supporting climate assessment and adaptation projects at city and building scale.

鈥淗ow to live with rising temperatures is an urgent question we all face today. As governments put in place measures to mandate responses to this question, it has become impossible to ignore the essential role that architects, engineers, and urban planners have to play in ensuring that the spaces we inhabit are resilient and responsive to our changing climate.”

鈥淚n dense spaces, it is essential to consider the impact of the heat-island effect, especially on vulnerable populations such as the elderly and children, and to identify hot spots that require particular interventions. For our work on the Burscheid Heat Action Plan, a town in Germany, we developed a comprehensive, multi-step strategy for climate adaptation.

鈥淔irst, a microclimate study of the town was conducted, based on the analysis of current recorded climate data such as weather data and satellite imagery and to be expected projections.. We then carried out extensive consultations with residents to understand the experience of living in Burscheid and moving through its spaces. These conversations were an important complement to the quantitative data gathered through scientific study and the thermal classification exercise. Residents are the true experts on their city, and their input is crucial. A central part of this was an for residents.鈥�

鈥淚n parallel, meetings with city officials were carried out in order to ensure the solutions developed through the study could be implemented with the necessary administrative support. The result was a heat action plan for Burscheid.鈥�