Urban heat island effect in metropolitan areas: An optimal control perspective

Abstract

This work combines numerical modelling, optimization techniques, and optimal control theory of partial differential equations in order to analyze the mitigation of the urban heat island (UHI) effect, which is a very usual environmental phenomenon where the metropolitan areas present a significantly warmer temperature than their surrounding areas, mainly due to the consequences of human activities. At the present time, UHI is considered as one of the major environmental problems in the twenty-first century (undesired result of urbanization and industrialization). Mitigation of the UHI effect can be achieved by using green roofs/walls and lighter-coloured surfaces in urban areas, or (as will be addressed in this study) by setting new green zones inside the city. In order to study the problem, we introduce a well-posed mathematical formulation of the environmental problem (related to the optimal location of green zones in metropolitan areas), we give a numerical algorithm for its resolution, and finally we discuss several numerical results for several realistic 3D examples.