Renewable Energy 29 (2004) 249262 www.elsevier.

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Building cluster and shading in urban canyon for hot dry climate Part 1: Air and surface temperature measurements
F. Bourbia a,, H.B. Awbi b
b a Universite de Constantine, Departement dArchitecture, Constantine, Algeria Department of Construction Management and Engineering, University of Reading, Reading, UK

Received 23 July 2002; accepted 11 May 2003

Abstract Under low latitude conditions, minimization of solar radiation within the urban environment may often be a desirable criterion in urban design. The dominance of the direct component of the global solar irradiance under clear high sun conditions requires that the street solar access must be small. It is well known that the size and proportion of open spaces has a great inuence on the urban microclimate This paper is directed towards nding the interaction between urban canyon geometry and incident solar radiation. The effect of building height and street width on the shading of the street surfaces and ground for different orientations have been examined and evaluated. It is aimed to explore the extent to which these parameters affect the temperature in the street. This work is based on air and surface temperature measurements taken in different urban street canyons in EL-Oued City (hot and arid climate), Algeria. In general, the results show that there are less air temperature variations compared to the surface temperature which really depends on the street geometry and sky view factor. In other words, there is a big correlation between the street geometry, sky view factor and surface temperatures. 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Shading; Urban canyon; Urban microclimate; Street geometry

Corresponding author. Tel.: +213-31-642304; fax: +213-31-612876. E-mail address: h.b.awbi@rdg.ac.uk (H.B. Awbi).

0960-1481/$ - see front matter 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0960-1481(03)00170-8

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1. Introduction The main climatological problems, with which both ancient and contemporary building are confronted in desert regions, are due to high altitude solar radiation and high air temperatures. An interesting and useful feature of the old cities in the Sahara region of Algeria, is their cluster design and urban microclimate, which is seldom referred to or taken into account by current planners. The urban geometry factors are at best still limited to the architectural composition with no attention paid to the importance of climatology in relation to the urban design process. Chandler [1], amongst many others, has noted that the implication for proper urban design of cities in high temperature climates is to plan the buildings and their spatial arrangement so as to waken the heat island, and particularly reduce street temperatures, as much as possible. This paper aims to explore the extent to which the temperature in the street is affected by urban geometry (building heights and street width), building orientation, the space between buildings (urban canyon) and the treatment of the exposed surfaces. This investigation is based on the town of ElOued, the Souf region, which is part of about 19 oases and is located at latitude 33.22N and longitude 06.53E near the Libyan border in the south east of Algeria. 2. Site description and monitoring 2.1. El-Oued city and climate Two different architectural styles can be recognized in El-Oued, old traditional vernacular architecture and modern contemporary architecture. They are different in style and applied techniques and materials. The old city is situated in the center of El-Oued surrounded by three major roads, which distinctly separate the traditional town from the contemporary district. The old city has a traditional architecture. It consists of different environmental adaptation

Nomenclature H SVF Ti Tn To Ts W Height of the building facades, m Sky view factor Inside temperature, C Neutral temperature, C Outdoor temperature, C Temperature of the surface Width of the street (width between buildings), m

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techniques. Passive systems utilising convective, evaporative, radiant and earth cooling are found on a community and residential scale. The overall structure of the town is compressed and characterised by a dense network of narrow twisting alleys, varying in width and direction facilitating shaded movement between neighbourhoods [2]. Unlike the old city of El-Oued, the new town is characterised by new patterns that are based mainly on the grid-iron master plans, with wide roads and large open spaces (see Fig. 1). New private houses and state buildings indicate a break in the evolution of the house form. The warmest months in the Sahara (El-Oued) are July and August with an average maximum temperature as high as 44.8 C, occurring at about 3.00 p.m., and an average minimum temperature of about 26.8 C occurring at about 6.00 a.m. The diurnal air temperature swing during July is high, reaching almost 18 K and this is even larger for the ground than for the air. The ground temperature is usually much lower at night and higher during the day than the air temperature, especially where the surface consists of sand dunes. The coldest month is January with an average maximum temperature reaching 20 C at 3.00 p.m. and a minimum temperature of 5.6 C at 6.00 a.m. with a diurnal swing of 14 K, see Fig. 2. The relative humidity is rather low and sometimes less than 20% in the hottest months, as shown in Fig. 3. In addition, the high sun radiation intensities over this region during summer, the great number of sunny hours and clear skies contribute to the climatic harshness of El-Oued region. 2.2. Site selection The urban street canyon has been adopted as the basic structural unit of analysis in much urban climate research, both for measurement and modeling [3,4]. In order to evaluate the temperature variation between the traditional and the contemporary microclimate, air temperature and surface temperature measurements were made for eastwest and northsouth-oriented urban streets. The measurements were performed in December/January 1995 and 1996 and July/August 1996 and 1997, representing the coldest and hottest periods. These were carried out simultaneously in both sites over a 2-week period, and one typical daily cycle has been selected to represent each of the detailed monitoring periods (summer and winter). Several test locations were examined to determine their suitability for experimentation. From these, a number of stations were selected to fulll the experimental requirements. Figs. 4 and 5 illustrate these selected locations. These were primarily chosen because they represented the typical urban canyons geometries found on the two sites. The main factor for selecting the sites were H/W ratio, orientation and materials used. The walls enclosing the streets of the traditional town are made of sandstone with crenellated (rough) surface and the street surface area covered with sand. While in the contemporary site the walls enclosing the streets are made of concrete with beige washed exterior nish and the street surface covered with asphalt. Secondary, factors affecting the choice of location included: Trafc: Existence of heavy trafc could affect the measurements of temperature.

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Fig. 1. The traditional and the contemporary site layout (El-Oued).

A factor in the choice of the two sites was that both lie within residential areas that were not subjected to heavy trafc. Vegetation: It is widely acknowledged that plants are used for solar control. To avoid the effect plants, the selected sites did not contain any vegetation. Since the purpose of the measurements was to obtain information on the relation

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July 50
Temperatures oC

253

JAN 44.8

45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 5.6 26.8

20

14

16

18

20

22

24 Hours

Fig. 2.

Hourly dry bulb temperature for typical summer and winter days for El-Oued.

JULY JAN 100

Relative Humidity %

90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 2 4

85

44

13 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24

Hours

Fig. 3.

Hourly relative humidity for typical summer (July) and winter (January) days for El-Oued.

between the urban geometry described by H/W, orientation, the urban surface and the air temperatures measurements were taken on walls, on different ground surfaces and at different points inside the canyon at an average height of between 1.5 to 1.6 m, i.e. head height of a standing person. All the measurements recorded have been compared with the reference data taken from the meteorological station situated at Guemar (5 km from the site investigated). Station AT (traditional site) and AC (contemporary site) are located in north south street orientation with a sky view factor (SVF) of 0.16 and 0.79, respectively.

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Fig. 4.

Measurement locations in the traditional site.

Fig. 5.

Measurement locations in the contemporary site.

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Station BT (traditional site) and BC (contemporary site) are located in eastwest street orientation with a sky view factor of 0.24 and 0.89, respectively. These stations were selected for continuous recording of air temperature every 2 h during the measuring period. 2.3. Instrumentation The external measurements were made by using double-shielded and aspirated type-T thermometers. In addition, thermometers type Pro 7010/9010 were used to measure the surface temperature of the walls and the ground surface or the air temperature. Thermistor temperature sensors case type TEMP-02-2-T02-016 enclosed in an aluminum casing were also used in measurements. The external measurements were taken every 2 h, sequentially at each station from the rst station (A) to the second one (B). Readings from the various instruments were recorded manually. The time spent for each measurement was between 5 to 10 min and the procedure was repeated at each station. The recording were carried out simultaneously at both sites, with one group of students recording the data at the traditional site and the second one taking measurements in the contemporary site.

3. Results and discussion 3.1. Summer monitoring (July/August of 1996 and 1997) Summer data during the daytime hours show some variations in the thermal behaviour of the different stations, when compared to the local climate and with each another. 3.2. Station AT-AC The orientation of traditional streets is mostly northsouth (NS), generally connected by small open spaces. Their width (W) is usually 26 m. While the average building height (H) is 68 m. The H/W ratio is therefore between 1.3 and 4. At the traditional site AT (H / W = 2.0) that was monitored, the environmental conditions during the 2 weeks of monitoring indicate that the air temperature of the (NS) street during the day is lower than at other sites (AC). The peak street temperature was 2.53.5K lower than the reference temperature of the local meteorological recording (Guemar station), see Fig. 6. For the streets along the NS orientation in the summer, a solar exposure of the east face can be observed from sunrise till 11.00 and of the west face from 13.00 to sunset. The solar altitude during this period is between 0 to 80, when the NS streets in the traditional town are shaded before 10.00 and after 14.00 (solar altitude: 61.10) as shown in Fig. 7. Therefore, the duration of solar radiation incident on both the east and west facade simultaneously was still less than 3 h. The values of the surface temperature Ts at the sunlit positions are higher than the air temperature, during this period. According to Pearlmuter [5],

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Station AT
60
Temperatures oC

Met(T) Canyon(1.5m) West facing(Ts) East facing(Ts)

55 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24

Hours

Fig. 6. Traditional northsouth street (H / W = 2) temperature at 1.5 m height and surface temperature of the east and west walls (26 July 1997).
10a.m 11a.m 2p.m 3p.m 4p.m 5p.m 6p.m 1p.m 9a.m 8a.m 7a.m 6a.m

Fig. 7. Traditional street section with shadow projection at different times, July (NS street).

the pedestrian standing in the narrow street canyon is exposed not only to less radiation (due to shading of the body), but also to less diffuse radiation (due to restricted sky view factor). Eliasson [6] found surface temperature to be statistically correlated to the sky view factor (SVF) and Mills and Arneld [7] found that as street canyons become increasingly narrow, they become increasingly isolated in terms of heat exchange with the atmosphere above. At station AC (H / W = 0.5), the direct solar radiation in the summer season reaches

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a considerably larger portion of the building surface area. This greater contribution of direct solar radiation, due to the large sky view factor angle, appears to be a signicant factor in the accelerated increase of air temperature inside the canyon between the hours of 9.00 and 18.00. Fig. 8 shows the outside surface temperatures (Ts) of the walls facing east (west wall) and west (east wall), compared with the air temperature, in the canyon. The values of Ts at the sunlit position, especially on the wall facing west are remarkably higher than the street ambient temperature from 12.00 to 18.00, reaching a peak of 53 C at around 16.00. While at this time Ts on the wall facing east (shaded) is nearly equal to the street air temperature of 44 C, which is higher than the temperature recorded at Guemar station. From 18:00, for the wall facing west (east wall), Ts dropped sharply in response to the commencement of shading. It is clear therefore, that after a building is exposed to summer sunshine for a certain period of time, the building itself acts as a source of heat for raising the temperature of the air and the microclimate, including that of the internal spaces, as described by Akbari et al. [8]. Akbari et al. [8] found that the shade reduced both the temperatures of the exterior surfaces and the energy used for cooling. In their conclusions they mention that the shading trees at the two monitored houses in Sacramento yielded seasonal cooling savings of 30%, corresponding to an average daily saving of 4.8 KWh/day. This would suggest that when city buildings have low albedo and unshaded surfaces are exposed to sunlight, the surfaces become very hot and in turn increase the air temperature. 3.2.1. Stations BT-BC Summer data for station BT (H / W = 1.5) show that the ambient air temperature of the eastwest street was higher by up to 4 K (reaching a maximum of 46 C) than the NS orientation street (see Fig. 9).
Station AC
Temperatures C

55 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 2 4 6 8

Met (T) Canyon(1.5m) West facing(Ts) East facing(Ts)

10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 Hours

Fig. 8. Contemporary NS street (H / W = 0.6) temperature at 1.5 m height and surface temperature of the East and West walls (26 July 1997).

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Met(T) Canyon(1.5m) 60
Temperatures oC

Station BT

Facing North(Ts) Facing South(Ts)

55 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18

20

22

24

Hours

Fig. 9. Traditional eastwest street (H / W = 1.6) temperature at 1.5 m height and surface temperature of the north and south walls (26 July 1997).

Again the surface temperature variation on the south and north walls were not uniform, as shown in Fig. 9, which illustrates the hourly variation of the street air temperature and surface temperature at station BT. At 10.00 a.m. the sun starts to increase the surface temperature of the wall-facing south (north wall), which reaches a maximum of 50.6 C at 14.00. By this time Ts of the wall-facing north (south wall) which is under the inuence of shading dropped to 40.5 C. At noon, when the sun is overhead, about one third of the street is receiving direct solar radiation. These sunny surfaces become the major source of reected radiation incident on the wall facing north which increases its temperature. This greater contribution of direct solar radiation appears to be a signicant factor in the accelerated heating of the eastwest street between 11.00 and 18.00. It should be noted that the increase in the surface temperature of the wall facing south and the temperature of the eastwest street is caused primarily by the lack of shading resulting from the difference in height between the north wall and the south wall. This causes an increase in solar absorption by all the exposed surfaces (Terjung and Louie [13]). According to Etzion [9], Meir and Pearlmutter [10] and Meir et al. [14] exposure of open spaces to hot winds, and undesirable solar radiation may cause these spaces to become heat traps. In the contemporary site at station BC (H / W = 0.5) with eastwest streets, see Fig. 10, the sun shines on the wall facing north for nearly 4 h in the morning and an equal duration in the afternoon. The maximum intensity of direct radiation occurs at 10.00 and at 18.00 leading to Ts values of 43.8 and 45 C, respectively. The reected radiation which is present as soon as the sun rises caused Ts to increase to 44 C at noon, i.e. when the sun is due south. At this time, more than two thirds of the width of the street was receiving direct solar radiation at the rate of 846 W/m2 and also the whole facing south wall exposed to sunlight with a direct sun beam of 376 W/m2. These sunny surfaces became the major source of reected radiation

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Station BC
TemperaturesoC

Met(T) Canyon(1.5m)

60 55 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18

Facing North(Ts) Facing South(Ts)

20

22 24 Hours

Fig. 10. Contemporary eastwest street (H / W = 0.4) temperature at 1.5 m height and surface temperature of the north and south walls (26 July 1997).

incident on the northern facade. The wall facing south received direct radiation from 9.30 to 15.30. At noon the ambient air temperature of the EW street canyon was remarkably higher than the traditional site reaching 51.3 C. This was mainly caused by the warming of the air volume in the canyon by the sensible heat transfer from the sunlit road (asphalt) and the south-facing wall. From midnight, the values of Ts were lower than the ambient street temperature and the temperature recorded at Guemar station, but the difference is relatively small. The results for the two contemporary streets (both H / W = 0.5) show that the EW street has a higher temperature than the NS street, but compared to the traditional site the difference of between 3 to 5 K is signicant, see Fig. 11. These results show that the degree of grouping, expressed in terms of plan area density, orientation of the external open spaces and resulting shading pattern in urban areas, is an important parameter for the siting of a building. Givoni [11] and others have suggested that, in hot dry regions, a high density of building can ensure that most of the radiation exchange will take place at the roof surfaces. If highly reective, the roof can create a negative overall radiation balance. According to this concept therefore, air at roof level will be cooler and denser than that at ground level and will sink into the open spaces, providing that the air temperatures in the surrounding areas are higher. Ventilation during most daytime hours is not a dominant factor, since its cooling effectiveness in hot dry climates is very limited because of the low wind speed and high air temperature. However during the night, ventilation is crucial when the wind became cool and for this period of time the orientation is very important because of the importance of the attack angle between the average wind speed and canyon axis. When the attack angle is small (nearly parallel), the canyon wind speed is attenuated to about two-thirds of the free-stream value. Winds are more severely attenuated to about one-third of free ow [5]. The depth of the canyon (H/W ratio)

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Met(T) Canyon N-S(T) 60 55 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 Hours
o

Canyon E-W(T)

Fig. 11. Contemporary EW (H /W = 0.4) and NS (H / W = 0.6 street temperatures (26 July 1997).

also affects this attenuation. For the traditional site most of the streets are compact and nearly oriented northsouth (along the prevailing summer wind direction) which helps to provide cooler night temperatures. When the wind is at a steep angle to a deep street, its speed is reduced but when it is directed along the street axis, the wind ow will be increased particularly in narrow streets. A study by Jackson [12] on the inuence of micro-meteorological factors on the air quality within urban street canyon showed that there was a poor correlation between pollution concentrations and meteorological parameters in the canyon. 3.3. Winter monitoring (December/January of 1996 and 1997) Generally, the winter season is a short period (about 2 months) with a moderate air temperature especially during the day. The site measurements showed that there was not a great difference in the external temperature recorded between the two sites (external spaces) compared to the meteorological station of Guemar. However, in the traditional site, the NS street performs better than EW street in terms of temperature. Measurements show that the NS street warms up much faster than the EW street early in the morning, mainly due to low solar altitude and narrow azimuth angles, but the overall temperature difference is not more than 1.5 K. Outdoor comfort during winter period is inuenced by the wind ow.

4. Conclusion The most important characteristic of the built form of the traditional site at ElOued, Algeria is that, at any given time, only a small proportion of the buildings

Temperatures

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are exposed fully or directly to the intense solar radiation during summer. However, the dust and sand movement in the streets will affect the comfort level inside the traditional site. Also the absence of vegetation increases the dryness of the air. The contemporary district is exposed to the sun most of the day and dark asphalt covering most surfaces acts as a heat trap causing over-heating of the open spaces instead of reecting the solar energy back to space. This suggests that a more open and exposed nature of urban canyon can result in an increase in the daytime air temperature within the canyon. Certainly, urban canyons contribute to a higher temperature than that experienced within the city. This effect can be reduced by controlling the sky view factor, street architecture that creates shading and the inclusion of vegetation. Air temperature greater than 30 C generally occurred at around 10.00, and the maximum daily values were reached at around 15.00. Higher surface temperatures were present in contemporary urban canyon than in the traditional urban canyon and which conrms the correlation between the surface temperature and the sky view factor. Thus, the sky view factor has a great inuence on surface temperatures of urban canyons. It is also shown that the increase in temperature in summer is more pronounced in eastwest than the northsouth oriented canyons. The geometry of open spaces plays a decisive role in their thermal behaviour. The latter can be improved by the correct orientation of buildings for shading, while ensuring adequate sky view factor in order to moderate the harshness of the climate. The results presented in this paper have also shown the need for a further study to cover a larger range of geometries, orientation, wider variation of H/W ratio and sky view factor.

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