DUBAI: Mr Jay Sadiq never planned to build a technology company. The United Arab Emirates national launched a material science company back in 2020, inspired by the cooling techniques that the city of Los Angeles was trying to implement at the time.“LA was trying to paint roads with a white pigment to cool them down. We wanted to cool down the UAE,” he said.
But his plan for a colourless asphalt that could reduce surface temperatures of roads and buildings across the country was quickly shut down when potential clients noticed a major flaw in the plan.
“The client was asking, ‘Where are you going to put it? … You need to identify the hot areas’,” Mr Sadiq explained.“We couldn’t find this data. And then we understood that this is a data problem.”
It means that in Singapore for example, urban areas can be up to seven degrees Celsius hotter than forested areas. In other parts of the world, including the Middle East, the effect can be even more extreme, straining the comfort and health of city residents.
In addition, regional and global temperatures are rising due to climate change, which is also increasing the frequency and severity of weather events like heat waves.
World leaders gathered at the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) in Dubai as the planet experienced its hottest year on record, and United Nations (UN) secretary-general Antonio Guterres warned humanity was “living through climate collapse in real time”.
More cities are now looking for solutions.
Heat, a “silent killer”, has been overlooked until “very recently”, noted Ms Eleni Myrivili, global chief heat officer at UN-Habitat and the Atlantic Council’s Arsht-Rock Resilience Center.
Reliable and useable data showing where heat is doing the most damage, and the solutions that could be adopted, is lacking in many places around the world but FortyGuard hopes to supply some of the answers.
The start-up is focusing its attention on the United States, where it is already partnering with Rochester City in New York under a subscription plan. It plans to do similar modelling in Europe and Asia.
FortyGuard’s data is potentially useful to navigation tool developers who can guide pedestrians to take a cooler route, said Mr Sadiq.
Property listing applications could also use it to cater to homebuyers who want good microclimate conditions, while insurers and the banking, health and logistics sectors could use it to develop new products and better understand risk.
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FortyGuard tested much of its data gathering and technology in an unusual desert city with ambitious architectural features, close to Abu Dhabi International Airport.
Masdar City is the green urban vision of its company namesake, which is helmed by Sultan Al Jaber, also the president of COP28 and the head of the UAE’s national oil company.
Launched in 2006, the grand idea of a zero-carbon, zero-waste metropolis has largely not been realised, except for its inner core, which comprises just 10 per cent of the city’s proposed total size.
Modelled on ancient Arab city designs, the largely empty city centre is car-free and noticeably cool.
Natural breezes funnelled by innovative building design, shadowed walkways, as well as surfaces and windows that reflect instead of absorbing solar glare keep temperatures lower than surrounding areas.
The city encourages walkability, a notion that would be unheard of elsewhere in the UAE, where daytime temperatures have exceeded 50 degrees Celsius.
“Everything in Masdar City’s planning revolves around how to moderate heat naturally to make the outdoor environment comfortable,” said Mr Chris Wan, the city’s head of design management.
While the ambition for Masdar City to power itself with solar energy and pump its own water supply has been scrapped, there are still valuable lessons to be found here, Mr Sadiq said.
This grand-scale experiment was a tool for FortyGuard to finesse its product and ideas about what makes a city liveable. “They really enabled us to understand how to demonstrate our solution at a city level,” he said.
For existing cities grappling with urban heat, the answers can often be simple, said Ms Zogheib of Arup, which has piloted its Urban Heat Snapshot tool in six cities – Cairo, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Mumbai and New York – to understand local heat impacts.
“First of all, we need to increase tree canopy cover. We need to de-pave and we need to start creating more permeable surfaces that water can dissipate through to minimise radiation and overheating of the surfaces. Thirdly, we need to start thinking about cool roofs,” she said, referring to roofs that reflect more sunlight and absorb less heat than conventional roofs.
“Cities are heating faster (than the rest of the world) and it’s time now to take action,” she said.
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