Urban morphology on heat island and building energy consumption

With the rapid urbanization of cities, the morphology of urban blocks develops from a single and low-density type to a diversified and high-density one, which has great influence on the underlying ground surface conditionings, ventilating performance and heat gain at a district scale, thus enhancing urban heat island effect and increasing building energy consumption. In this paper, the distinct urban attributes (greening rate, building density, and volume ratio) of ten districts around the county meteorological stations of Shanghai were collected to explore the relationships between the urban heat island effect and the urban morphology attributes. In addition, an energy model for a typical office building was setup to investigate the quantity effect of these distinct urban attributes on the energy performance of the buildings located around these ten county meteorological stations. The results show that the correlations between the urban island effect and distinct urban attributes exist. The heating load indexes of the buildings located in downtown are 1.5-5% less than those in the suburbs. As the heat island intensity raises by 1 degrees C, the average heating energy consumption will decrease 5.04%. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.