Evaluate the Cooling Effect of Vertical Urban Greenery in Hong Kong

People: Jianxiang Huang (HKU), Yali Wang(HKU)

Many cities are making efforts to reduce the heat island effects such as planting of trees and shrubs. However it is unfeasible in dense cities, whereas greenery need to compete with buildings and roads for highly priced real estate. Vertical green wall emerged as an innovative greenery strategy in recent years, is green wall a plausible solution to mitigate urban heat island effect in dense cities?

This research studies the influence of vertical green wall to air temperature and thermal comfort at pedestrian level and develops a one dimensional heat transfer model to describe the surface and air temperature at the green wall.Findings from this research will help to give design and policy recommendation to application of vertical green wall in dense cities.