Cool materials with higher solar reflectance compared with conventional materials of the same color are widely used to maintain cooler urban fabrics when exposed to solar irradiation and to mitigate the Urban Heat Island (UHI). Photo-catalytic coatings are also useful to reduce air pollutants. Many studies related to these topics have been carried out during the past few years, although the lighting implication of reflective coatings have hardly been explored.

As urban overheating is increasing, there is a strong public interest towards mitigation strategies to enhance comfortable urban spaces, for their role in supporting urban metabolism and social life. The study presents an assessment of the existing thermal comfort and usage of San Silvestro Square in Rome during the summer, and performs the simulation of cooling strategies scenarios, to understand their mitigation potential for renovation projects.

Green roofs offer a series of benefits to buildings and to the urban environment. Their use in dry climates requires optimizing the choice of their components (i.e., vegetation, substrate and drainage layer) for the specific local climatic conditions, in order to minimize irrigations needs while preserving the attributes of the roof. In this study, we calibrated and validated an existing hydrological model—IHMORS—for the simulation of the hydrological performance of green roofs.