Cooling Singapore on Diplomatic Courier
Prof Peter Edwards writes in the Diplomatic Courier of the need to tackle the Urban Heat Island effect and how the Cooling Singapore project is playing a role in this.
"One of the delights of the tropics is the delicious cool air in the evening. As the sun goes down, people move gratefully to their gardens or balconies, or flock to parks to enjoy the remains of the day—but not in Singapore.
The city is too hot, especially in the evening, with temperatures that often remain in the high 20’s or low 30’s Celsius throughout the night. This is not just, because Singapore has a tropical climate, but because the city has grown warmer in recent years due to the “Urban Heat Island” effect (UHI)."
"Thankfully, further warming of Singapore is not inevitable," writes Prof Peter Edwards, Principal Investigator of the Cooling Singapore project and Professor Emeritus of ETH Zurich.
In the external pageDiplomatic Courier, Prof Edwards writes about the impact of the need to cool to improve liveability and well-being of the city's inhabitants and how the Cooling Singapore project is doing its part to mitigate UHI and improve outdoor thermal comfort.
The external pageCooling Singapore project was initiated in 2017 to find means to mitigate UHI and improve outdoor thermal comfort. One of the key tasks of the team is to establish a UHI task force consisting representatives from academia and government agencies, who can provide important insights from different perspectives.
The most important outcome of the project is a roadmap to guide policy and help coordinate long-term UHI mitigation efforts and R&D activities. The roadmap is the culmination of the 18-month interdisciplinary project led by the Singapore-ETH Centre, in collaboration with NUS, SMART, and TUMCREATE, and with the contribution of the task force.