This paper was presented at the Art, Science and Applications of Reflectance Spectroscopy Symposium sponsored by ASD Inc. and IEEE GRSS, February 23-25, 2010 in Boulder, Colorado.

Author: Masayuki Ichinose
Affiliation: Tokyo University of Science, Tokyo, Japan

Abstract

The fourth IPCC report WG3 (2007) emphasizes the potential of architectural design in minimizing CO2 contributions. It is important to examine the strategy that decreases the energy consumption of the buildings. Moreover, attention to the environment surrounding buildings is also important. For example, the heat island phenomenon brought about by the accumulation of buildings is conspicuous in in warm climates. Therefore, instead of developing efficiency improvement independently in the buildings, the coupled evaluation of the buildings and the outside microclimate is necessary. One of the effective strategies includes control of spectral selectivity and directivity of solar radiation on the building envelope. For the building internal space, appropriate visible solar radiation is effective, because utilization of daylight contributes to the reduction in the consumption of the electricity for lighting and air-conditioning cooling load. Therefore, it is preferable that the windows be highly transparent in the visible region and opaque in the infrared region. On the other hand, for the outside space around the buildings, accumulation of solar heat reflected by the building envelope worsens the thermal environment at the urban street level, but also has harmful effects on the buildings because of the heat island phenomenon. Therefore, it is preferable that the building envelope have high backscatter performance that enables solar radiation to be reflected skyward. The optimization of the building facade based on spectral measurements and the effects on the inside and outside of the buildings will be discussed.