Anthropogenic heat implications of Colombo core area development plan

Abstract

Statistics on energy use and built density portrays Colombo as the largest consumer of energy and most significant producer of waste heat in Sri Lanka, and the city is facing extensive growth permitted by current development plans. However, Colombo Core Area is threatened by Urban Heat Island effect (UHI). Anthropogenic heat impact on UHI is crucial and its future trends need to be studied before facilitating further development. In this paper we use Local Climate Zone classification to typify the study area into zones of similar climate. This is then integrated with population data, building electricity consumption and vehicle counts to map anthropogenic heat emission at local scale, under current and projected land-use change in Colombo. Results reveal that building waste heat makes the highest impact, in comparison to vehicle and metabolic heat. Thus, building density change, electricity consumption in each building and projected land use change, could have greater impact on anthropogenic heat flux at neighbourhood scale, which would further exacerbate the UHI problem at city scale.