Customisable Urban Model for Quantifiable Thermal Observations (CUMQUAT)

随着城市化程度的提高，城市热岛预计将会扩大，从而增加居民在炎热天气中患上与高温相关的疾病和死亡的风险。人为气候变化已经将2003年夏季热浪的可能性增加了一个数量级，预计到本世纪40年代，这样的夏季将是正常的。而最近2022年的热浪估计又造成了3271人死亡。尽管如此，除了简单地增加城市绿地之外，英国政府目前还没有关于如何对抗城市热岛的政策。这无疑是基于一种长期的信念，即在城市地区增加植物或水将通过增加蒸散量来提供降温。然而，情况要复杂得多，对于绿色和蓝色空间来说，降温效果取决于绿色或蓝色空间的大小、形状、分布和类型。这是除了当地的气候条件、一年中的时间、周围的表面粗糙度、可用取水长度以及周围的城市几何和物质条件之外。目前，我们对所有这些因素之间的相互关系的理解存在差距，导致绿色和蓝色空间提供的有效冷却很少或根本没有，如果是蓝色空间，在炎热的静止时期，例如热浪，实际上可能会恶化环境条件。与绿地相比，蓝色空间对城市小气候的影响研究要少得多。该项目旨在通过创建一个世界领先的测试设施来研究蓝色空间对城市小气候的影响，以弥合我们在理解上的这些差距。金橘阵列将允许在自然环境负载下对城市环境中不同大小和配置的蓝色空间进行受控测试。所部署的环境传感器的数量和种类将允许采用“带和支撑”的方法进行数据收集，并为创建详细的数据集提供足够的数据，以验证数值模拟，并探索在不同环境加载模式下进行的各种热量和质量传递机制。金橘阵列的用处超出了这项建议中详细介绍的实验范围，将使研究人员能够更好地了解城市水体的行为。例如，城市水体何时提供降温效应，这种降温效应横向扩散到多大程度，城市水体何时恶化局部环境条件，加剧对人类健康福祉的风险，城市水体在什么条件下才能促进热量、空气和污染物的垂直输送，远离城市表面？更好地了解这些条件将使城市地区能够更好地规划，纳入BluesSpace，以减少甚至中和城市热岛，并缓解热浪和未来的环境变化。

With increasing urbanisation, the urban heat island is expected to grow, increasing the risk to inhabitants of heat related illness and death during hot weather. Anthropogenic climate change has already increased the likelihood of a 2003 summer heatwave by an order of magnitude, and such summers are expected to be normal by the 2040s. While the recent 2022 heatwaves are estimated to have caused an additional 3,271 deaths. Despite this the UK Government currently has no policy on how to combat the urban heat island beyond simply increasing urban green space. This is no doubt based upon the long-held belief that adding plants or water to an urban area will provide cooling by increasing evapotranspiration. However, the picture is far more complex, for both green and blue space, cooling effectiveness depends on the size, shape, distribution and type of green or blue space. This is in addition to the local climate conditions, time of year, the surrounding surface roughness, the available fetch length and the surrounding urban geometry and materiality. Currently there are gaps in our understanding of the inter-relationships between all these factors leading to green and blue spaces that provide little or no useful cooling and in case of blue space may actually worsen environmental conditions during hot still periods such as heatwaves. The effects of bluespace on the urban microclimate is considerably less studied than that of greenspace. This project aims to close these gaps in our understanding through the creation of a world leading test facility into the effects of bluespace on the urban microclimate. The CUMQUAT array will allow the controlled testing of different sizes and configurations of blue space in an urban setting under natural environmental loading. The quantity and variety of environmental sensors deployed will allow a 'belt and braces' approach to data collection and provide sufficient data for the creation of detailed data sets for the validation of numerical simulations, but also exploration of the various heat and mass transfer mechanisms going on under different environmental loading patterns. The usefulness of the CUMQUAT array goes beyond the experiments detailed in this proposal and will allow researchers to gain a better understanding of the behaviour of urban waterbodies. For instance, when do urban waterbodies provide a cooling effect and how far does this spread horizontally, when do urban waterbodies worsen local environmental conditions exacerbating the risk to human health and wellbeing, under what conditions can urban waterbodies promote the vertical transport of heat, air and pollutants away from the urban surface? A better understanding of these conditions will allow urban areas to be better planned to incorporate bluespace to reduce or even neutralise the urban heat island and providing relief from heatwaves and future environmental change.