Using remote sensing to quantify albedo of roofs in seven California cities

Source

Authors

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Published

2014

Description

Cool roofs reflect sunlight and therefore can reduce cooling energy use in buildings. Further, since roofs cover about 20 - 25% of most cities, widespread deployment of cool roofs could mitigate the urban heat island effect and partially counter urban temperature increases associated with global scale climate change. The magnitude of these potential benefits for a given city depends on the increase in albedo that can be achieved using reflective roofs. Assessing this increase requires knowledge of roof albedo at the city-scale, which until now has been unknown due to a lack of reflectance data with sufficient spatial coverage, spatial resolution, and spectral information. In this work we use multiband aerial imagery to derive the albedos of individual roofs in seven California cities: Los Angeles, Long Beach, San Diego, Bakersfield, Sacramento, San Francisco, and San Jose. This is a state-funded research study sponsored by ARB.

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