Urban Heat Resilience

The increase in urbanization and anthropogenic activities has led to the extensive construction of more heat retentive surfaces, and a generation of waste heat in metropolitan and urban areas. This has resulted in the intensification of Urban Heat Island (UHI) effects - where the ambient temperatures rise and remain higher than surrounding areas.

Combined with global warming and climate change, UHI will exacerbate the rise in local temperatures and increase the frequency and intensity of extreme heatwave events in urban areas.

Singapore, as a densely populated city state in the tropics, is highly susceptible to the adverse effects from climate change and the UHI effect. Their associated issues will lead to chronic heat stress, vector-borne diseases and short and long term physiological, social and economic impacts.

Our Approach

At NUS, we adopt a complex systems approach to formulate integrated solutions that respond to increasing stressors of climate change, including heat and air pollution, across multiple interlinked systems and physical scales.

We integrate our research strengths in

1. climate-sensitive design of the urban environment;
2. development and deployment of energy efficient smart cooling technologies;
3. physiological, social and economic analyses of the impacts of heat stress and associated strategies, to develop multi-dimensional, structural, technological and social heat stress resilience models through our established Energy Studies Institute and Centre for Energy Research and Technology.

We also conduct technological proof-of-concept testbeds in our campus living lab environment, best practices and guidelines design, physiological interventions and social analysis, cross-sectoral consultations, and workshops with government agencies, industry partners and other social and economic actors to translate our research into scalable, implementable and cost-effective solutions to promulgate to cities globally.