A Review of Urban Heat Island-Reducing Pavement Types and Thermal Properties

Urban Heat Island (UHI) has led to a rise in temperatures in cities, reaching up to 9 °C higher than that of rural areas. UHI-Reducing (UHI-R) pavements that are designed to mitigate UHI have gained increasing attention both from practitioners and researchers. While the research on UHI-R multi-material pavements has been focusing on heat transfer within these pavements, there is a need to study their durability over time. The durability of multi-material pavement systems, UHI-R fall under such category, is strongly affected by the interface conditions between different layers. The aim of this literature review is to study and compare the different types of the UHI-R pavement systems and to gather the properties required to study the bonding performance of their interface. The reviewed papers are grouped into four families according to the type of the studied pavement solution, namely, highly reflective, permeable, thermally modified, and energy harvesting pavement systems. These families are critically compared according to their durability, efficiency, and cost. This chapter shows example ranges of the thermal properties of UHI-R pavements. Finally, the literature review confirms the need to characterize the thermo-mechanical and mechanical properties of the recent UHI-R pavement systems to improve and optimize their bonding performance to enhance their durability.