Assessment of Urban Heat Island in Conjunction with Green Coverage in Large Cities: Cairo, Egypt, and Rome, Italy

A comprehensive review is needed to assess urban heat islands (UHIs) in large cities, in order to propose strategic solutions for the Greater Cairo Region (GCR) in Egypt (Africa) and Rome, Italy (Europe). This review will address the question: What is the current status of urban heat islands effect (UHIE) and urban green coverage (UGC) in these two large cities? This chapter presents a comparative analysis between the ten UHIs’ studies conducted in GCR for the period 2013 to 2022 and eight studies in the period of 2010 to 2023 in Rome, Italy. This is necessary to derive conclusions regarding UHIE mapping, especially that in contrast to the global awareness of the significance of urban heat islands’ studies, very limited studies have applied remote sensing methods to map UHIE in Africa. Also, it highlights the main findings regarding UHIE mapping in GCR and Rome to deduce the effects of this phenomenon. In addition, this chapter assesses the current conditions of UGC in the two cities. Results indicate that the green area per capita in GCR is far below the global standards. This is supported by the fact that the most optimistic studies in 2010 state that the green space per person is about 2 m2, but the highest share is 3.22 m2 per person (2020); while in the city of Rome, it is 15 m2 per person. Therefore, implementing UGC is a significant strategy to mitigate UHIE in Egypt. Furthermore, this chapter highlights the importance of delving into the UHI phenomenon and assesses the existing UGC, which is vital to map hot spots that need intervention and prioritizes locations for applying UGC in large cities. The application procedures will be thoroughly elucidated in Chap. 6.