Smart Irrigation for City Cooling

To cope with increasing temperature in cities, Livesley et al. (2021) proposed small-scale solutions that cities can use to increase thermal comfort to not only humans but also fauna living in the urban environment. With the widespread use of rainwater tanks, stormwater capture and recycled sewage wastewater, the system can also function as an irrigation and misting tool to combat extreme heat and drought amelioration. 

Better irrigation of greenspace has shown reduced daily temperature up to 2.3 ^oC. On the other hand, misting systems or other evaporative cooling technology can reduce ambient air temperature by up to 4 ^oC. Making use of the existing smart water system such as recycled wastewater and rainwater tanks could increase the city's resilience to urban heat and drought and improve the liveability of the city for the people, animals and vegetations living in it. 

Reference:

Livesley, S. J., Marchionni, V., Cheung, P. K., Daly, E., & Pataki, D. E. (2021). Water smart cities increase irrigation to provide cool Refuge in a climate crisis. Earth's Future, 9(1), e2020EF001806.

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