Urban heat - Built environment indicator

The built environment sits within a wider environmental context that is influenced by human activity. Urban areas can become significantly warmer than surrounding vegetated areas due to human activity and development, when cities replace natural land cover with dense concentrations of pavement, buildings, and other surfaces that absorb and retain heat. This creates islands of urban heat, with temperatures differing more during the night than during the daytime. Changes in land use from grasslands to medium density result in the greatest increase in heat (0.5°C – 0.9°C).

This indicator will support practitioners to understand the urban heat island effects across urban areas of NSW. Based on the outcome of the assessment, practitioners can determine whether mitigation measures such as greening will improve the urban heat island effect. It can also provide insights into the relationship between green cover or development proposals and urban heat.

The practitioners can use the urban heat island effect metric to measure the effects of urban heat islands and the impacts of changing land uses.