Roof Albedo Map Los Angeles

White roofs could be painted on every roof in the city in order to immensely increase the overall albedo of the region.

Roof albedo map los angeles.

Albedo is the fraction of sunlight that is reflected from a surface. This map displays roof albedo solar reflectance estimates from berkeley lab for los angeles. Similar to the concept of increasing the albedo of city pavements white roofs have the potential to cool the atmosphere of los angeles by reflecting more sunlight back into space instead of absorbing it during the day and. We have been leaders for decades in developing energy efficient windows improving indoor air quality coming up with new ideas to fix the nation s electricity grid and so much more.

Berkeley lab scientists use aerial imagery to create an interactive map that displays the solar reflectance also known as albedo of individual roofs in bakersfield long beach los angeles san francisco and san jose. Los angeles for example recently implemented an ordinance that requires all new or refurbished residential buildings to be equipped with cool roofs. It is measured on a scale of 0 to 1 where higher numbers indicate greater reflectance. This map contains four different types of data.

The area weighted mean roof albedo standard deviation for each city ranges from 0 17 0 08 los angeles to 0 20 0 11 bakersfield. The california roof albedo project sponsored by the california air resources board aims to improve measurements of solar reflectance throughout california using high resolution aerial imagery to measure reflectance of visible and near ir radiation. The potential dividends of the ordinance are illustrated by the swaths of red and orange roofs indicating low albedo roofs in the los angeles portion of the map. Albedo is the reflecting power of a surface.

We are at the forefront of cutting edge research that redefines building technology and explores all areas of urban systems. Fire origins mark the fire fighter s best guess of where the fire started. Reflective roofs are more energy efficient and cooler inside and out. For our study we will use images taken of california in 2009 by the national agriculture.

In each city nearly all roofs have low albedo in the range of 0 05 0 25 panel b fig. The data is provided by calfire.