Cities as "hot spots"
Prof Gerhard Schmitt talks about how "Cooling Singapore" tries to mitigate the urban heat island effect, while Lea Ruefenacht speaks to residents to understand their perception of outdoor comfort.
"Although cities take up only 2-3% of the world's surface area, they act like 'hot spots', generating 50-60% of the heat and greenhouse gases," said Prof Gerhard Schmitt, lead principal investigator of the Cooling Singapore project.
In the third episode of the documentary external pageTipping Point on Channel NewsAsia (39:15), he expressed optimism that the outcomes of the Cooling Singapore project would not only benefit Singapore, but the knowledge on urban heat island (UHI) effect could be shared beyond our tropical city state. He said, "Every city in the world has an urban heat island effect. Whatever we can find out in Singapore is applicable to all tropical and subtropical cities. If we can solve it here, we can solve it almost anywhere."
The film crew also followed Lea Ruefenacht and Nicole Lim from the Cooling Singapore team to the residential estate of Punngol, to understand people's perception of outdoor comfort. Temperature affects everyone differently and human comfort is also affected by humidity and wind speed, for instance. Other factors like one's attire and activity would also affect the perception of comfort
Lea Rufenacht explained why urban heat island effect needs to be tackled urgently. "If we combine the conditions of the tropical climate, including high temperatures and high humidity, with increasing temperature, this may have consequences on people's quality of life, productivity and health," she said.
In the documentary (35:25), Assoc Prof Dan Friess, principal investigator of Natural Capital Singapore also discussed why it is important to understand the true value of natural habitats and how habitats such as mangroves are especially effective for storing carbon.
