An Analysis of the Effect of Cool Pavement on the Urban Thermal Environment

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of cool pavement, which is one of the measures applied to reduce the urban heat island effect, on the actual thermal comfort of urban residents based on mean radiant temperature (MRT). To this end, the area of Mugye-dong, Jangyu-ro, Gimhae-si, Gyeongsangnam-do, where cool pavement has already been applied to roofs and roads, was selected as a study area. The distribution of MRT in the area was identified for each observation session using images taken by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, and observations from an automated weather station (AWS). To understand the characteristics of each of the spatial conditions of the survey targets, the cool pavements applied to roofs and roads were classified and analyzed, and the directions were broken down. Through the analysis, it was found that cool pavements applied to roofs and roads in open spaces showed the largest deviation in MRT values from those in general spaces. For roofs, the highest deviation was found to be 1.926 and 2.151 at 13:00 on both cloudy and sunny days, respectively; whereas for roads the highest deviation was 0.774 and 1.122 at 7:00 on both cloudy and sunny days, respectively. This suggests that the MRT of cool pavements have various distributions according to spatial and temporal conditions.