Using cool pavements as a mitigation strategy to fight urban heat island – A review of the actual developments

Heat island phenomenon rises the temperature of cities, increases the energy demand for cooling and deteriorates comfort conditions in the urban environment. To counterbalance the impact of the phenomenon, important mitigation techniques have been proposed and developed. The use of cool pavements presenting substantially lower surface temperature and reduced sensible heat flux to the atmosphere, appears to be one of the most important proposed mitigation solutions. The present paper investigates and describes the actual state of the art on the field of cool pavements. The existing results clearly show that the mitigation and cooling potential of cool pavements is very significant and can highly contribute to decrease temperature on the urban environment.