Heat island phenomenon and cool roofs mitigation strategies in a small city of elevated temperatures

High urban temperatures are observed during the last 100 years due to heat island phenomenon. The effect is intensively pronounced even in small sized cities by temperature differences between rural and urban environment reaching even 6 oC. In order to keep the phenomenon under control, mitigation strategies, especially concerning cool roofs has been established. Under hot and arid climates roof temperatures reach almost 70 oC and about 50% of heat enters into buildings through roof slab.  

The aim of this paper is to present heat island phenomenon in a small city of Western Greece and propose energy saving techniques that improve overall energy performance of building stock and are easy to be applied.