HOW SINGAPORE USES SCIENCE TO STAY COOL If you examine a thermal image of a city
then compare that to a map of vegetation, you will find out that where there is greenery,
the temperature is lower. That is because things like asphalt, concrete and shingled roofs absorb
more heat from the sun than trees. This can be the urban heat island effect, and it accounts
for the upper temperatures in cities, often by several degrees compared with their surroundings.
It is becoming a major threat to human health as the world's growing urban population
exacerbates the warming effects of global climate change. Heat waves, like tornadoes,
hurricanes, and even floods, kill more people than other extreme weather events. That is why
a group of researchers in Singapore are looking into urban heat island mitigation strategies.
Cooling Singapore, a government-backed project, is now in the process of combining everything
they've learned to create a digital tool that can help cities all over the world, beginning with
Singapore. Temperatures in Singapore, near the equator, regularly exceed 32 degrees Celsius or 90
degrees Fahrenheit.The city structures exacerbate the situation. This is also true for Singapore,
which is largely a jungle but has become more urbanized and developed. Even in Singapore,
there could be a temperature difference of seven degrees Celsius between the more
urbanized and the more rural areas. The government has taken drastic measures to reduce temperatures.
Gardens by the Bay is an award-winning park. Before we go any further,
I'd appreciate it if you could give us a thumbs up by hitting the like button,
share our video, subscribe to this channel, and turn on your notifications for new videos.
It's a pleasant 24 degrees inside this greenhouse. This is because the dome, along with 24 nearby
towers housing thousands of people, is cooled by what is likely the world's largest underground
district cooling system. It employs a massive central plant to cool water, which is then piped
into banks, residential towers, an exhibition center, shopping malls, and the city's iconic
marina bay sands hotel and casino complex. One of the most significant advantages of using this
technique for the building is that they will save 40% on electricity usage when compared
to traditional air conditioners. With Singapore relying on gas for a large portion of its power,
this new system will result in emissions savings equivalent to removing 10,000 cars from the city's
roads. This has far-reaching consequences for the rest of the world. If current trends continue,
more than a third of the world's electricity could be used to cool buildings and vehicles by 2050.
As the world becomes hotter and warmer, there is a greater demand for air conditioning and similarly,
refrigerators. Furthermore, as more people purchase these household appliances,
they consume more energy and emit more heat, exacerbating global climate change.
It's a never-ending cycle. Since 2017, Cooling Singapore researchers have been identifying
design solutions that reduce our need for a lot of cool air in the first place. The importance of
vegetation is something that many cities share. That is a very important measure for reducing
urban heat, thanks to the shading effect and, of course, the deep psychological effects of
vegetation. Also, because of the vegetation's potential evaporative cooling effect. It will
be the bottom floor in a variety of trees and shrubs due to the potential evaporative cooling
effect of the vegetation. This could be the canopy layer formed by the vegetation above us.
It can, however, climb the facades of the buildings and visit the roofs of the buildings.
Fortunately, Singapore has been striving for the Garden City to grieve slowly.
It was a vision first presented by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in 1967 to make people's lives more
pleasant. In terms of urban vegetation, Singapore is now one of the world's greenest cities.
Kampung Admiralty, a civic center with health facilities and social spaces,
now has more green space than the plot of land on which it was originally built. It is topped
by a roofscape of staggered terraces covered in local plants, which serves as a community park and
is common throughout the center, which includes farm plots for residents to tend to. Parkroyal on
Pickering was designed as a hotel within a garden, doubling the site's green-growing potential.
Sky gardens, reflecting pools, waterfalls, planter terraces, and green walls now cover 15,000 square
meters. Singapore intends to plant 1 million trees and expand green spaces over the next ten years.
It's a combination of one thing and another to reduce the urban heat island effect. On the
other hand, it is also intended to encourage people to become more connected to nature.
However, this is insufficient. The city-state has still warmed twice as fast as the global average
over the last six decades. As a result, Cooling Singapore has compiled a list of additional
potential heat-mitigation measures. When attempting to reduce urban heat, island effect
in an exceedingly city or any building, or in an exceedingly village, the primary place to begin
is by shading the windows. You must keep areas clear so that the wind can pass through.
A specific depth of water can serve as an excellent thermal buffer.
If you need to build large structures, such as high-rises, you can make the surface,
or facade, lighter. You'll also be able to shield it from direct sunlight.
We must ensure that no combustion engines exist in the city, the middle, or the medium- to
long-term range. So, ideally, electricity production takes place outside of town.
And you only bring clean electricity into town. You will be reducing the
amount of energy used in the city. And you'll gradually convert the town's roofs, or facades,
into renewable energy production areas. This is frequently a limited option in Singapore.
However, in the long run, it has the potential to produce up to 25% of the energy required in
Singapore. Try this if all of the roofs and thus the areas within the buildings, on the buildings,
and on the facades are used to it. Cooling Singapore is also creating a virtual model
of the city to test out their various ideas. It's known as a digital urban climate twin, or DUCT,
and it calculates how each element of the city's design affects the urban heat island effect.
That is, we digitally model not only the geometry of the buildings, but also the transportation, the
insulation, the temperature, the solar radiation, the weather, the local weather, the local climate,
the microclimate of town, the water, and the movement of people within the city.
We'll make up scenarios. We will create scenarios and test them before building them.
And if they pass the tests and we are confident that they will work,
we can begin to design them and bring them to life. Singapore will use this new tool to
determine what actions it should take next. As a result, the model will be applicable to any city,
whether it needs to keep heat out or keep heat in, ultimately saving energy,
slowing temperature change, and improving our quality of life. As a result,
Singapore may be ready to export this, possibly alongside its existing city development systems.
Singapore is one of the world's few cities that has combined this scientific approach with an
established urban redesign and concrete design approach. It has accomplished a great deal in
the past through its agencies and the combination of its agencies. If it continues to follow the
scientific path and also the combination with the opposite knowledge within the city, we
anticipate that it will be a very comfortable and extremely livable city in the future, even now.
Thank you for watching Grace Media's amazing video on HOW SINGAPORE USES SCIENCE TO STAY COOL.
Please remember to like, share, comment, subscribe, and turn on your notifications
for more informative and exciting content.