A New Approach to Urban Heat Island Assessment in the Context of Greater Kuala Lumpur

Logaraj Ramakreshnan^1,2*, Nasrin Aghamohammadi², Amirhosein Ghaffarianhoseini³

1. ¹Institute of Graduate Studies, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
2. ²Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health, Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
3. ³Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Published in The First NZAAR International Event Series on Natural and Built Environment, Cities, Sustainability and Advanced Engineering, Putrajaya, Malaysia, 26 June 2016, pages 181 to 183. New Zealand Academy of Applied Research. ISSN 2463-5979 (online), 2463-5960 (print).

Abstract

Urban heat island (UHI) has become a growing concern for Kuala Lumpur (KL) as many studies reported a significant increase of air temperature in highly densed urban areas compared to its surroundings. A critical review of the recent UHI studies revealed the insufficiency of field measurements to apprehend the severity of UHI magnitude in the consecutive years. Few studies comprehensively reported the influence of urban fabrics on the development of UHI in KL. Many fundamental studies just reported the alteration to natural surfaces as the main factor while the introduction of green spaces in urban areas as a good initiative to reduce the UHI effects. This creates a gap for the future studies to investigate the overall scenario of UHI by exploring more factors and mitigation strategies. The use of Local Climate Zone (LCZ) scheme in future studies will allow the researchers to include the effects of urbanization in quantifying UHI magnitude as many studies in the past failed to account the contribution of urban fabric towards the development and mitigation of UHI. This study also highlights the expert stakeholders sharing sessions on UHI phenomenon in University of Malaya as an initial initiative to devise more advanced UHI studies in the upcoming years as a move towards sustainable KL city as stipulated in Tenth Malaysia Plan (RMK 10).

Keywords: UHI; Greater KL; LCZ; Urban microclimate; Sustainable city

Rights

Copyright © New Zealand Academy of Applied Research Ltd 2016. All rights reserved. Reproduced in the GDI Academy archive from the original proceedings without change to the authors’ text.