As featured by Engineering News Record:
In an effort to combat heat gain in urban areas and mitigate the effects of climate change, researchers in Arizona are evaluating reflective coatings for roadways.
A team from Arizona State University is working with the City of Phoenix’s Office of Sustainability and Street Transportation Dept. to study the cooling potential of a reflective pavement coating in a pilot program.
The goal is to combat the urban heat island (UHI) effect, the phenomenon where urban areas have higher temperatures than their surroundings due to the solar heat absorbed and later emitted by buildings and infrastructure. For the pilot, the city applied CoolSeal by GuardTop—a light-colored, water-based, asphalt emulsion sealcoat with 33% reflectivity, according to the manufacturer—to pavement already marked for rehabilitation across eight neighborhoods. The product was used on 36 miles of road and a public parking lot, “the most miles of road surface coverage with a reflective coating of any municipality globally,” the ASU researchers wrote in their report to the city issued in September.
This article was originally published by Engineering News Record. Read the full article here.
