Enhancing the relevance of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways for climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability research

This paper discusses the role and relevance of the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) and the new scenarios that combine SSPs with representative concentration pathways (RCPs) for climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability (IAV) research. It first provides an overview of uses of social–environmental scenarios in IAV studies and identifies the main shortcomings of earlier such scenarios. Second, the paper elaborates on two aspects of the SSPs and new scenarios that would improve their usefulness for IAV studies compared to earlier scenario sets: (i) enhancing their applicability while retaining coherence across spatial scales, and (ii) adding indicators of importance for projecting vulnerability. The paper therefore presents an agenda for future research, recommending that SSPs incorporate not only the standard variables of population and gross domestic product, but also indicators such as income distribution, spatial population, human health and governance

Biophilic architecture: a review of the rationale and outcomes

Contemporary cities have high stress levels, mental health issues, high crime levels and ill health, while the built environment shows increasing problems with urban heat island effects and air and water pollution. Emerging from these concerns is a new set of design principles and practices where nature needs to play a bigger part called “biophilic architecture”. This design approach asserts that humans have an innate connection with nature that can assist to make buildings and cities more effective human abodes. This paper examines the evidence for this innate human psychological and physiological link to nature and then assesses the emerging research supporting the multiple social, environmental and economic benefits of biophilic architecture

Optimization of urban cooling strategies for parking lots in hot and dry climates: Case study of Las Vegas and Adelaide

Urban microclimates are distinguished by the balance between solar gain and heat lost from building envelope and ground surfaces, by convective heat exchange, and by the generation of anthropogenic heat within the city. Global climate change and the urban heat island (UHI) effect—whereby cities are up to 8 °C hotter than their surrounding countryside—carry growing threats to outdoor living, public health, and urban energy demand. Urban heat stress intensifies in cities with hot and dry summer climates such as Las Vegas (USA) and Adelaide (Australia), where the temperature goes frequently above 36 °C (97 °F). Both cities have a dry, hot, and arid climate. Possible adaptation countermeasures include cool surfaces, urban greenery, and active cooling with the consideration of higher demand for water and energy, and potential winter cooling penalties. Large open-air parking lots appear in many modern cities around shopping malls, hospitals and public venues and provide essential access to these public facilities. In this context, a comparative study of different cooling strategies informs more effective decision making for the design and implementation of UHI adaptation and mitigation strategies. This chapter compares urban cooling strategies for typical parking lots in Downtown Las Vegas, Adelaide CBD and the suburban context. Cool surface materials, tree canopy, evaporative cooling and shading scenarios are estimated, and cooling benefits and side effects of each intervention are discussed. The research shows that planting trees between car parking spaces is vital to most urban environments, especially for parking lots where it leads to 1–5 °C summer cooling.Ehsan Sharifi, Phillip Zawarus, Steffen Lehman