Investigating the Impact of Urban Fabric on Urban Albedo: Case Study of London

The paper presents the preliminary work in developing an Urban Albedo Calculator, an empirical model to predict changes in urban albedo in relation to changes in the urban fabric, materials, solar geometry, etc. It investigates experimentally, through a 1:10 scale model a case study in central London, and computationally, through RADAINCE, the impact of urban geometry and materials’ reflectance. Following the successful calibration of the model, the results highlighted the substantial impact of urban materials and their placement on urban albedo, demonstrating that biggest weighting of horizontal ground surfaces in the case of low rise environments. The effect of geometry was investigated through different scenarios, at ground and roof levels, as well as through changes in the H/W ratio. The results demonstrated that increasing the H/W ratio has the most significant impact on urban albedo, with the albedo changes varying under different sky conditions due to the orientation of the blocks.