Dr Giridharan Renganathan delivers keynote speech at international conference, ICON BEST 2021

Director of Centre for Architecture and the Sustainable Environment (CASE), Dr Giridharan Renganathan, delivered a key note speech as a ‘celebrity speaker’ at ICON BEST 2021, a virtual international conference on the built environment, science and technology. The conference took place on 20 and 21 February 2021, with speakers from USA, Canada, UK, Australia and Asia.

The conference was organised by SRM Institute of Science and Technology in Tamil Nadu, India. The team behind the conference explain, “The built environment is increasingly becoming a product of technology, and the biophysics involved in building has an important role to play in human wellbeing.

ICON BEST 2021, seeks to source state of the art developments in the built environment for a better understanding of the fundamentals, and to discuss the way forward for a better tomorrow.”

Dr Giridharan Renganathan’s talk titled, ‘Temperate Urban Climate – Field experiment and modelling studies on urban heat island to urban albdeo’, discussed Dr Renganathan’s research into urban heat islands in London with project partners from University College of London, Reading University and Brunel University. The research base for this project was taken from data of outdoor temperatures in 77 locations in London between 1999 and 2000.

Dr Renganathan also discussed CASE’s Urban Albedo research project which he authored (principal) along with Marialena and Watkins. The discussion mainly revolved around the methodology and monitoring work with a specific focus on 1:10 model of Stanley Terrace at the University of Kent Canterbury campus, and calibration of radiance model.  He concluded the talk by highlighting the future plans for the Urban Albedo project.