From Shade to Cool Pavement: Strategies Towards Healthier, More Liveable Cities

Extreme heat has wide-ranging adverse effects on people’s health, performance, and well-being. Phoenix, Arizona, in the desert Southwest USA, is a living laboratory where outdoor cooling strategies can be tested in real-world neighbourhoods. This presentation provides an overview of recent studies in collaboration with local governments in Phoenix to find effective heat mitigation strategies, from trees and engineered shade to cool pavement. Researchers used MaRTy, a biometeorological instrument platform developed at Arizona State University that can sense how heat is “experienced” by a pedestrian. Findings from Phoenix are highly relevant to Singapore and other (sub)tropical areas in Southeast Asia where heat management and urban sustainability are critical concerns. Insights can inform policies to mitigate heat, enhance urban resilience, and improve quality of life.

Speaker

Ariane Middel, Associate Professor, Arizona State University

Ariane Middel is an Associate Professor at Arizona State University, where she leads the SHaDE Lab. Her research focuses on how urban design affects heat and human thermal exposure in cities. Dr. Middel has advanced urban climate science through applied and solutions-oriented research using unconventional field methods such as MaRTy, microclimate simulations, and human-centric modeling. Dr. Middel is the President of the International Association for Urban Climate (IAUC) and serves on the “Built Environment” Board of the American Meteorological Society.

Moderator

Moshe Mandelmilch, Research Fellow, Singapore Management University

Moshe Mandelmilch is a Research Fellow at Cooling Singapore 2.0 WP-B under the supervision of Winston Chow, Professor of Urban Climate at SMU and Pillar Lead (Urban Infrastructure), Urban Institute. Dr Mandelmilch holds a PhD in Geography from Tel Aviv University, Israel. He specialises in various remote sensing systems and platforms (satellites, airplanes, drones and ground cameras) and city climate research, mainly mapping the urban heat island. His studies combine metrological measurements with remote sensing to map the city's climate.