Benchmarking Thermal-behaviour in Transitional spaces as an Energy Efficiency Resource (COOL & SCAPE)

The central aim of the UNCOVER project is assessing and planning cool landscapes to improve energy neutrality, urban climate resilience and citizens`s health by reducing levels of both, outdoor and indoor climate vulnerability, particularly in deprived city areas. Outlining, at the same time, an urban design recommendation tool for decision-making that provides urban designers, planners, and other policymakers, with the appropriate means for effectively measuring the development of cities. All this, by focusing on the complex outdoor-indoor interaction in the present and future urban overheating scenario. More specifically, it proposes models for evaluating the vulnerability vectors linked to thermal comfort. It also implies a methodology for developing a comprehensive framework for the generation and updating of dynamic climate risk map. In addition, the formulation of an integrative strategy of design guidelines for the development of outdoor spaces, as well as a list of climate vulnerability indicators for improving urban infrastructures, is also envisaged. As a pilot action, these will be applied to the potential development of open spaces at different case studies used for both model generation and testing. Due to the extreme severity of its summer climate and the magnitude of its urban diameter, the project proposes case studies selected from vulnerable urban spaces in the cities of Seville and Barcelona.

Whereas the Project is intended to prioritize actionable strategies to address the growing impacts of climate change in cities, moving beyond conceptual frameworks to implement tangible solutions, a four-phase structure should be understood under the premise of systematising the decision-making process in a logical way. It should also be considered that it is not a one-way watertight compartmentalised structure, but a dynamic network exposed to constant feedback nodes aimed at improving its usefulness. Diagnosis. GIS-based layers overlap to establish the initial urban analysis. Research novelties in this section are: The use of remote sensing data for the study of overheating at the urban scale. And, also, linking subsoil characteristics to the UHI effect. Intervention. Data-driven digital shadows to simulate microclimatic, energy and comfort performances. As main research novelty: To design of a comprehensive modelling process of microclimate, comfort and energy demand in the interaction of buildings and public spaces layout. Evaluation. Results cross-analysis to verify, in the medium-long time, the feasibility of the specific selection of strategies. As research innovations: Evaluation of the microclimatic effectiveness of vegetation linked to environmental and seasonal conditioning factors. Estimation of the potential for reducing energy dependence in vulnerable urban areas. And preliminary LCA linked to different intervention alternatives for both embedded energy and operational energy derived from buildings energy demand. And Replicability. Potential applicability to other case studies within and outside the cities under analysis. The main novelty is: The proposal of an implementation methodology for urban governance and planning that prioritize equity, sustainability and urban climate resilience to effectively move from theory to action to successfully address actual multidimensional urban challenges.