TY - JOUR
T1 - Compound environmental impact of urban mitigation strategies
T2 - Co-benefits, trade-offs, and unintended consequence
AU - Wang, Zhi Hua
N1 - Funding Information:
This study is supported by the U. S. National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant numbers AGS-1930629 and CBET-2028868, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under grant # 80NSSC20K1263. I thank Peiyuan Li and Dr. Chenghao Wang for the help in preparing the artwork.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2021/12
Y1 - 2021/12
N2 - Urban areas confront a number of environmental issues including excessive thermal stress and concentrated emissions of greenhouse gases and pollutants. In past decades, many mitigation strategies have been designed and implemented to counteract these issues and ameliorating the environmental quality in cities, which can be broadly classified as white, green or blue infrastructure. The functioning and efficacy of urban mitigation strategies involve complex interactions between landscape dynamics, anthropogenic activities, and atmospheric transport, which leads to compound, rather than singular, environmental impacts. In this study, we conducted a critical review of the compound environmental impact of urban mitigation strategies, and evaluated, besides the targeted cooling effect, the resultant co-benefits, trade-offs, or unintended consequence, in terms of building energy saving, air quality improvement, carbon emission offset, and impact to human health. Furthermore, we proposed a novel mathematical framework that is capable of assessing the compound environmental impact in a unified way, together with some preliminary results as the proof-of-concept. A number of knowledge gaps are identified which calls for future transdisciplinary synergy among urban engineers, atmosphere and climate scientists, and epidemiologists.
AB - Urban areas confront a number of environmental issues including excessive thermal stress and concentrated emissions of greenhouse gases and pollutants. In past decades, many mitigation strategies have been designed and implemented to counteract these issues and ameliorating the environmental quality in cities, which can be broadly classified as white, green or blue infrastructure. The functioning and efficacy of urban mitigation strategies involve complex interactions between landscape dynamics, anthropogenic activities, and atmospheric transport, which leads to compound, rather than singular, environmental impacts. In this study, we conducted a critical review of the compound environmental impact of urban mitigation strategies, and evaluated, besides the targeted cooling effect, the resultant co-benefits, trade-offs, or unintended consequence, in terms of building energy saving, air quality improvement, carbon emission offset, and impact to human health. Furthermore, we proposed a novel mathematical framework that is capable of assessing the compound environmental impact in a unified way, together with some preliminary results as the proof-of-concept. A number of knowledge gaps are identified which calls for future transdisciplinary synergy among urban engineers, atmosphere and climate scientists, and epidemiologists.
KW - Air quality
KW - Building energy
KW - Green-blue infrastructure
KW - Heat mitigation
KW - Mathematical framework
KW - Reflective surfaces
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U2 - 10.1016/j.scs.2021.103284
DO - 10.1016/j.scs.2021.103284
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85113513788
SN - 2210-6707
VL - 75
JO - Sustainable Cities and Society
JF - Sustainable Cities and Society
M1 - 103284
ER -