Canada (Commonwealth Union)_ According to a recent study, July was the hottest month and September has recorded temperatures in the 30s. It is no doubt that the world is getting hotter. For Umberto Berardi, professor and Canada Research Chair in Building Science for TMU’s Department of Architectural Science, this increase in temperature has signaled a warning that heat impacts our health.
Exposure to high heat causes increased visits to emergency rooms, higher mortality rates, and more strain on emergency services.
Berardi has been researching these impacts and possible solutions with partners from the University of Waterloo. Recently, in two published papers, one from the Greenbelt Foundation and the other from Science Direct, research specifies that increasing urban greenery cover lessens overall temperatures. Something as simple as planting more trees in order to increase canopy cover can not only reduce health risks due to hot temperatures, but can also decrease energy consumption, resulting in cooler homes and reduced hydro bills.
Other than the canopy cover of trees, Berardi has been researching on other ways, where Canada can catch up with other cities when it comes to heat mitigation, specifically in building design.
Berardi says that cities like San Francisco or Sydney have more awareness when it comes to health consequences and heat mitigation. He said, “We don’t have that kind of history in Canada because our cities are seen as cold climates”.
For example, buildings in San Francisco use “The Santorini Effect”, which deflect heat and keep buildings cool by painting the roofs in white.
Berardi says that in the future, multi-season cities like Toronto can adjust buildings to pull in heat when needed in the winter and deflect heat in the summer. He is working on a long-term research agenda that discovers how technology can be used to create thermochromic solar coating.
According to him, it acts like transition lenses for buildings, where everyone knows what that is, but the technology isn’t being used for windows or buildings.
Recently, Berardi was named as a Member of the Royal Society of Canada’s (RSC) College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. His main aim is to find a solution for buildings where energy is reflected away when it becomes too hot or too strong and is harnessed when it is needed, during the cold winter months.
The main goal with Berardi’s research is to provide policy makers with information so that they can build infrastructure which keeps individuals healthy, while the world adjusts to the impacts of climate change.
