A new study by Arup, a global sustainable development consultancy, has revealed Singapore’s heat island “hot spots”, highlighting the areas of the city’s urban centre where temperatures are highest compared to their rural surroundings. These are also known as Urban Heat Island (UHI) hot spots.
Arup’s Urban Heat Snapshot has identified a large cluster within the Singapore Central Business District (CBD) – including not only high-rise areas but also historical low-rise streets – as the most extreme “hot spots” in Singapore, experiencing temperatures 6°C higher than their rural surroundings. Using AI and satellite images, the research compared Singapore to the urban centres of six other cities - Cairo, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Mumbai, and New York – on the hottest day they experienced last year.
The study mapped the whole of Singapore, with a particular focus on a 150 km² snapshot of Singapore’s urban centre, using Arup’s digital heat analytics tool UHeat. As temperatures hit record highs around the world, compounding the UHI effect in cities, the tool has the ability to take a rapid snapshot of an area and model solutions to reduce the impact of its hot spots. The tool brings together advanced academic models, real-world scenarios and technology.
In the majority of cities, the hottest spots had less than 6% vegetation cover, while the coolest spots in most cities had over 70% and were found almost entirely in parks, away from residential and commercial areas.