Climate service for resilience to overheating risk in Colombo, Sri Lanka: a multi-scale mapping approach (COSMA)

与南亚许多其他发展中国家一样，斯里兰卡经历了严重的热浪，影响了数十万居民的健康和生计。当1)热浪以非线性方式与城市热岛重合时，热暴露的风险将进一步加剧；2)由于斯里兰卡的大多数家庭没有空调，人们的大部分时间都在室内度过，室内存在“连锁/同时”的热害。斯里兰卡人民世世代代生活在这种湿热气候中，建立了独特而卓越的气候、历史、文化和建筑价值观和知识，以适应极端气候，这反映在独特的乡土建筑和城市设计中。然而，随着城市化和经济的快速发展，斯里兰卡传统的乡土村庄和民居正在被快速建造的西式砖混结构所取代。斯里兰卡本土的气候敏感型设计知识正在被遗忘和消失。在发达国家，事实证明，新的数据流、改进的预报和更好的可视化技术有可能提高预报的效用，以便对不利条件进行早期预警。然而，对于全球南部的国家(如斯里兰卡)来说，至关重要的是提供这种气候服务，其中嵌入当地设计知识和利用当地资源，以提高对极端人道主义灾难的复原力。COSMA是一项多学科研究，将汇集城市气象学、建筑环境工程、建筑、城市规划和社会科学方面的一组专家，与当地利益攸关方合作，实现剪切方案的目标。该项目的核心是以下方面的研究：1)如何在更精细的城市和建筑规模上改进热浪过热风险预测和评估；2)斯里兰卡有哪些有用的本土设计知识来缓解热浪，以及如何将其再生并重新纳入热浪行动计划和未来的设计实践？COSMA旨在开发一种综合建模方法，通过考虑城市热岛、建筑特点和脆弱人群来建立有效的预警系统和城市规模的热行动计划。通过与当地社区、政府和专业人士的密切合作，COSMA项目的一个重要目标是从植根于当地文化和传统的土著工匠那里收获和再生传统设计知识(包括建筑和城市规模)，并将其纳入热暴露风险缓解计划。该项目的最终成果将是斯里兰卡科伦坡不同尺度的一系列分级过热风险和缓解潜力图。COSMA由雷丁大学(UOR)牵头，与格拉斯哥喀里多尼亚大学(GCU)合作，并与一批斯里兰卡的知名合作伙伴--气象局(DOM)、斯里兰卡城市规划师研究所(ITPSL)以及莫拉图瓦大学(UOM)的研究人员--合作开展。

Sri Lanka, like many other developing countries in South Asia, experiences severe heatwaves that affect the health and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of residents. The risk to heat exposure will be further exacerbated when 1) the heatwave coincides with urban heat island in the urban area in a non-linear manner; 2) there exists a 'cascading/concurrent' heat hazard indoors as the majority of the households in Sri Lanka have no access to air conditioning and people spend the majority of their time indoors. Living in such hot-humid climate for many generations, Sri Lankan people have established the unique and remarkable climatic, historical, cultural and architectural values and knowledge to be resilient to the extreme climate, reflected in the unique vernacular architectural and urban design. However, with rapid urbanization and economic development, the traditional Sri Lankan vernacular villages and dwellings are being replaced by fast-built, western-style brick-concrete structures. The indigenous Sri Lankan climate-sensitive design knowledge is being forgotten and disappearing. In the developed countries, it has been proved that new data streams, improved forecasts and better visualization techniques have the potential to improve the utility of predictions for early warning of adverse conditions. However, for the countries in the global south (e.g. Sri Lanka), it is vital to provide such climate services with embedded indigenous design knowledge and use of local resources to improve the resilience to extreme humanitarian disaster.COSMA is a multidisciplinary study that will bring together a group of experts in urban meteorology, building environmental engineering, architecture, urban planning and social science, to work with local stakeholders to deliver SHEAR programme objectives. At the heart of the project are the studies of: 1) how the heatwave overheating risk prediction and assessment could be improved at finer urban and building scales; 2) what are the useful indigenous design knowledge in Sri Lanka to mitigate heatwaves, and how they could be regenerated and re-incorporated into the heatwave action plan and future design practice? COSMA aims to develop an integrated modeling approach by taking into account the urban heat island, building characteristics and vulnerable population to build effective early warning system and city-scale heat action plan. By closely working with local community, government and professionals, one important goal of COSMA project is to harvest and regenerate traditional design knowledge (both building and urban scales) from indigenous craftsmen embedded within local culture and traditions, and feed into the heat-exposure risk mitigation plan. The final outputs of the project will be a series of hierarchical overheating risk and mitigation potential maps across different scales for Colombo, Sri Lanka. COSMA, led by the University of Reading (UoR), involves collaborations with Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU), and carried out in partnership with a group of well-established Sri Lankan partners-Department of Meteorology (DoM) and the Institute of Town Planners Sri Lanka(ITPSL) as well as researchers at University of Moratuwa (UoM).