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A review of challenges, barriers, and opportunities for large-scale deployment of cool surfaces

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Major urban centers are warming due to a combination of global and local phenomena. City governments are increasingly adopting strategies to mitigate the causes and impacts of extreme heat on their populations. Among these strategies are high solar-reflectance (cool) surfaces installed on building roofs and walls. Use of cool surfaces…

Major urban centers are warming due to a combination of global and local phenomena. City governments are increasingly adopting strategies to mitigate the causes and impacts of extreme heat on their populations. Among these strategies are high solar-reflectance (cool) surfaces installed on building roofs and walls. Use of cool surfaces is a cost-effective and simple strategy that replaces conventional darker surfaces with surfaces that have a high reflectance to shortwave (solar) energy.

This report reviews the recent history of cool-surface deployment efforts. This includes peer-reviewed literature, conference proceedings, and grey literature to identify challenges and barriers to wide-scale deployment of cool surfaces. We have also researched heat action plans and programs from cities and different codes and standards, as well as available incentive and rebate programs.

The review identifies challenges, barriers, and opportunities associated with large-scale deployment of cool surfaces and categorizes them broadly as being related to product development & performance or policies & mandates. It provides a foundation upon which we intend to build a roadmap for rapidly accelerating future deployments of cool surfaces. This roadmap will address identified challenges and incorporate lessons learned from historical efforts to generate a practical and actionable plan.
ContributorsAlhazmi, Mansour (Author) / Sailor, David (Author) / Levinson, Ronnen (Author)
Created2023-05-24
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Assessing Sustainability in the Water-Energy-Food Nexus

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With less than seven years left to reach the ambitious targets of the United Nations' 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is imperative to understand how the SDGs are operationalized in practice to support effective governance. One integrative approach, the water, energy, and food (WEF) nexus, has been proposed to…

With less than seven years left to reach the ambitious targets of the United Nations' 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is imperative to understand how the SDGs are operationalized in practice to support effective governance. One integrative approach, the water, energy, and food (WEF) nexus, has been proposed to facilitate SDGs planning and implementation by incorporating synergies, co-benefits, and trade-offs. In this dissertation, I conduct three interrelated WEF nexus studies using a sustainability lens to develop new approaches and identify actionable measures to support the SDGs. The first paper is a systematic literature review (2015 – 2022) to investigate the extent to which WEF nexus research has generated actionable knowledge to achieve the SDGs. The findings show that the WEF nexus literature explicitly considering the SDGs mainly focuses on governance and environmental protection, with fewer studies focusing on target populations and affordability. In the second paper, I reframed the water quality concerns using a nexus and systems thinking approach in a FEW nexus hotspot, the Rio Negro Basin (RNB) in Uruguay. While Uruguay is committed to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, sustainability challenges endure in managing synergies and trade-offs, resulting in strategy setbacks for the sustainable development of food, land, water, and oceans. Reframing the water quality problem facilitated the identification of potential alternative intervention points to support local problem-solving capacity. In the third paper, I conducted semi-structured interviews and examined the meeting transcripts of the RNB Commission to understand local perspectives about how the activities and initiatives taking place in the basin enhance or diminish the overall sustainability. Sustainability criteria for river basin planning and management were operationalized through qualitative appraisal questions. The case of the RNB illustrates the challenges of coordinating the national development agenda to local livelihood. This dissertation advances the WEF nexus and sustainability science literature by shedding light on the implications of the research trend to support the SDGs, as well as reframing and appraising a persistent water quality problem to support sustainable development.
ContributorsOjeda Matos, Glorynel (Author) / White, Dave D (Thesis advisor) / Brundiers, Katja (Committee member) / Garcia, Margaret (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023