Climate Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Roofs and Pavements: A Case Study at Sapienza University Campus

Abstract

The progressively emerging concept of urban resilience to climate change highlights the importance of mitigation and adaptation measures, and the need to integrate urban climatology in the design process, in order to better understand the multiple effects of combined green and cool technologies for the transition to climate responsive and thermally comfortable urban open spaces. This study focuses the attention on selected mitigation and adaptation technologies; two renovation scenarios were designed and modeled according to the minimal intervention criterion. The study pays attention to the effect on surface temperature and physiological equivalent temperature (PET) of vegetation and high albedo materials characterizing the horizontal boundaries of the site. The Sapienza University campus, a historical site in Rome, is taken as a case study. These results highlight the importance of treed open spaces and the combination of permeable green pavements associated with cool roofs as the most effective strategy for the mitigation of summer heatwaves and the improvement of outdoor thermal comfort.