Investigating the effect of building façade materials in mitigating UHI effect: An urban city centre study: Sustainable communities through Digital Transformation

The rise of urban air temperature is significantly influenced by rapid urban growth. However, the research on using façade materials to enhance outdoor conditions is limited. Therefore, this research aims to use computational modelling to analyse the effectiveness of building materials in urban microclimates. ENVI-met, a numerical simulation tool, was used to model and simulate an urban environment with building materials, roads, and pathways. A cluster of commercial buildings in the urban centre of Newcastle upon Tyne was selected for this research. Full-force weather conditions (air temperature, relative humidity, wind velocity and direction) were enforced in the model for conducting the simulation. The model was validated against the measured parameters (air temperature and relative humidity) using the statical indicators such as regression model R-squared, root mean square error (RMSE) and mean absolute error (MAE) for a typical summer day. The R-squared between the measured and simulated values shows a good agreement for air temperature (0.94) and relative humidity (0.95). RMSE and MAE statical indicators also show a good agreement for the air temperature. Furthermore, the analysis was conducted for facade materials properties such as high solar reflectance, high thermal emittance, and high specific heat capacity. On a representative summer day, it is observed that the urban air temperature can be reduced up to 1.4°C by implementing the high solar reflective coating. Implementing a high solar reflective coating could potentially mitigate the urban heat island effect and enhance urban thermal comfort.