Marcel Ignatius

A Climatic Responsive Urban Planning Model for High Density City: Singapore's Commercial District

Local climate condition and urban morphology affect air temperature generated within urban canopy layer which related to urban heat island (UHI) intensity and later impacts on outdoor thermal comfort and urban energy usage. Climatic responsive urban planning by careful consideration on urban morphology parameters of urban corridor width, building height, urban surface materials, sky view factor (SVF) and vegetation help to improve urban environment quality. This study mainly focuses on commercial district and observes impacts of various urban structures configurations towards air temperature by interpolating climatic and urban morphology predictors. The urban structures indeed show relation with level of air temperature generated although vegetation also contributes in reducing air temperature through its evapotranspiration process. Therefore the understanding of relation between urban morphology with thermal performance and UHI benefits in future urban planning and development.

STEVE Tool Plug-in for SketchUp: A User-Friendly Microclimatic Mapping Tool for Estate Development

Due to increasing urbanization and heat island issues, current cities need to sensibly plan their future developments to preserve the quality of their urban environment. An urban climatic map (UCmap) method can be utilized for this purpose to examine the effectiveness of various urban environmental solutions in improving environmental conditions, particularly in terms of outdoor temperature and human thermal comfort. The available climatic models for both temperature and thermal comfort mapping can be deemed complicated and less user friendly; particularly for practitioners such as urban planners. Hence, the Screening Tool for Estate Environment Evaluation (STEVE Tool) and Thermal Sensation Vote (TSV) models were developed with a motivation to link research findings with urban planners. This paper showcases the models which have been developed as a plug-in for Trimble SketchUp (formerly Google SketchUp and hereinafter simply SketchUp); serving as a straightforward analysis tool for urban planners during the design and feasibility study processes. This plug-in can generate various climatic maps and sectional temperature profiles. Furthermore, it is also equipped with a plants database from the National Parks Board (NParks) and thus is able to calculate the impact of landscaping on temperature and carbon sequestration accordingly. A case study has been provided, using a central business district (CBD) area in Singapore. In the end, the generated UCMaps are able to provide microclimate information for an existing masterplan or urban morphology layout, so that planners or architects can identify the hot spots or problematic areas and then solutions or mitigation strategies can be developed afterwards by analysing the UCMaps.

Comparison of STEVE and ENVI-met as temperature prediction models for Singapore context

In urban areas, natural land soil has been replaced by asphalt roads and concrete buildings, which absorb and retain more heat during the day, creating the Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon. Current studies show that UHI impact mitigation strategies are to increase the open spaces to allow urban ventilation and plant green cover. To complement this, a temperature prediction model could be effective for simulating and quantifying the temperature reduction for every developed strategy. This paper will look into two prediction methods: STEVE and ENVI-met. Screening Tool for Estate Environment Evaluation (STEVE) is a prediction tool which is able to calculate the T min , T avg and T max of the point of interest for certain urban settings. The temperature at that particular point is the result of its surrounding environment within the buffer zone. Output data from STEVE will be used as a database for a Geographic Information System (GIS) to produce temperature maps. ENVI-met is a Computational Fluid Dynamics ...