HOW URBAN DEVELOPMENT CONTRIBUTES TO THERMAL ENVIRONMENT VARIATION ---- A CASE STUDY IN NEW YORK CITY

The urban anthropogenic heat flux (AHF), which is one integral part of the deteriorating urban thermal environment, is seldom discussed for its ambiguity to accurately measure over heterogeneous land surfaces. Here, relying on remote sensing technology and meteorological models, AHF is estimated and illustrated on April 18, 2017 over NYC area. Furthermore, a few independent variables are developed in order to possibly explain the variations of anthropogenic heat flux, including road density, impervious surface area percent, building shape coefficient, standard deviation of building height and street canyon aspect ratio. On both community district and census tract level, four of the five variables (road density, impervious surface area percent, standard deviation of building height and street canyon aspect ratio) demonstrate steady significant linear relationships with anthropogenic heat flux. A final spatial error model suggests that 71.8% of AHF variation can be explained after spatial error term was incorporated. The results implicate that some planning and designing indices associated with urban developments like buildings and roads should be taken into consideration for a benign thermal environment. In this case, a compact sub-city level spatial unit with diversified building heights and minimum exploitation to pervious land is a good example in terms of AHF mitigation.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S., Regional Science

Level thesis:degree_level

Master of Science

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Regional Science

Grantor

Cornell University

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Yu, Zhou

Committee member dc:contributor.committeemember

• Schmidt, Stephan J.

• Anthropogenic Heat
• Urban Planning and Designing
• Regional studies
• Remote sensing
• Environmental studies
• Atmospheric sciences

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7298/ym19-t577

Dc Identifier Other

ProQuest Submission ID: 10559
ProQuest Publication ID: 13884104

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ecommons.cornell.edu:1813/67397