Environmental study of the impact of greenery in an institutional campus in the tropics

Urban environment quality is worsening every year. It is a fact that the urban air temperature is gradually rising in all cities and some effective measures are needed to mitigate it. Planting of vegetation is one of the main strategies to mitigate the urban heat island (UHI) effect. Large urban parks can extend positive effects to the surrounding built environment. National University of Singapore (NUS) complex can be considered as a “city” on a smaller scale. The greenery along Kent Ridge Road seems like a “rural” area, with a cooler ambient temperature. Some methodologies were employed in this study, such as satellite image, field measurement and computer simulations. The satellite image was used to identify the “hot” and “cool” spots in NUS environment. Field measurement was used to get the real temperature distribution across the campus and finally, computer simulation was used to predict some scenarios of different conditions. The result shows that buildings near or surrounded by greenery have lower ambient temperature than the ones away from the greenery and it is an effective way to lower the ambient temperature. The TAS simulation results also show that a rooftop garden has the potential of cooling energy savings for NUS buildings.