ILHAS DE CALOR EM BRASÍLIA

Abstract

The location of Brasília was chosen primarily due to its climatic conditions, and the Pilot Plan developed by urban planner Lúcio Costa entails bioclimatic features that are truly lessons on urban planning resilient to extreme heat, as are the architectonic solutions adopted by Niemeyer. However, uncontrolled urban sprawl has significantly altered the climate of the Federal District. Researches carried out by the LaSUS Lab in the last few years have shown a significant decrease of comfort in the city. In our studies about how to monitor the urban heat island phenomenon, thermal images from remote sensing were used. After the geoprocessing of the data from the chosen sample areas, the analysis of the urban thermal field of the Federal District is composed by: i) supervised classification of the surface materials (software Quantum Gis); ii) W/H factor (Width of the street / building height), according to a theoretical numeric base; iii) thermal satellite images such as transects and thermographic camera images. After the statistical correlation between the surface materials and the temperatures in Brasilia was confirmed, some conclusion can be drawn. First, the areas with greater percentage of grass, pavement or exposed soil presented the highest temperatures and the correlations were stronger. The Superblocks, with greater percentage of dense vegetation, presented lower temperatures. Although the correlation for these areas was strong, it also presents the lowest values amongst the areas of the Pilot Plan, which confirms that the correlations are even stronger in the areas where the surface materials contribute to warming. Our results show that effective adaptation policies to decrease heat storage in the urban fabric represent a safeguard for the future survival of this world heritage city.