Impact Mechanism and Improvement Strategy on Urban Ventilation, Urban Heat Island and Urban Pollution Island: A Case Study in Xiangyang, China

Abstract

There has been a growing interest in finding mitigation measures for urban heat islands and urban pollution islands that focus mainly on urban landscape mechanisms. However, relatively little research has considered spatial non-stationarity and temporal non-stationarity, which are both intrinsic properties of the environmental system, simultaneously. At the same time, the relevance of and differences between the thermal environment and air pollution has also been rarely discussed, and both issues are of great importance to urban planning. In this study, which is aimed at improving urban ventilation to reduce the urban heat island and urban pollution island effects, an urban ventilation potential evaluation, land surface temperature time-series clustering and air pollution source identification are comprehensively applied to identify the operational areas, compensation areas and ventilation corridors in Xiangyang, China, thus bridging the gap between academic research and urban planning. The specific research areas include: (1) defining the operational areas for urban ventilation corridor planning through an urban ventilation potential evaluation featuring urban morphology indicators, land surface temperature time-series clustering with k-means and an urban air pollution source diffusion analysis via the Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) and geographically weighted regression (GWR) methods; (2) identifying urban cold islands through land surface temperatures and delimiting the compensation areas in urban ventilation corridor planning; (3) designating urban ventilation corridors through an urban ventilation potential evaluation and computational fluid dynamics (CFD); and (4) improving urban ventilation corridor planning through defining operational areas, compensation areas and ventilation corridors as well as proposing corresponding control measures.