Heat Island and Urban Structure

The phenomenon of Urban Heat Island is shown by an increase in temperature that mostly affects urban areas in comparison with the surrounding rural areas. This increase in temperature becomes problematic during the heat waves when it can give rise to problems of energy and health. The factors affecting this phenomenon are related to the morphology and location of the urban area, to the characteristics of building and roads materials, to the shape of urban structure. The paper investigates the phenomenon of UHI by analyzing in particular the influence of major urban planning features: the average height of buildings, the building density, the coverage ratio, the percentage of impermeable surface. The study was carried out starting from the analysis of a real case within the Province of Naples. The identification of areas liable to heat islands has been done by working out a thermal map of the Province of Naples through the creation of hyper-spectral satellite images using remote sensing techniques. This map has allowed to select some sample areas within which the main urban planning parameters have been detected through remote sensing techniques or spatial analysis. For each parameter, correlation curves "temperature - urban planning parameter" have been worked out. The main result is the development of an abacus that allows to estimate the expected temperature changes according to the decrease or increase of each urban parameter