Potential strategies to mitigate the heat island impacts of highway pavement on megacities with considerations of energy uses

Abstract With the rapid expansion of urbanization around the world, the urban heat island effect embraced an enormous negative impact on megacities, including energy, environment and health conditions. Unfortunately, constructive geometry and human activities of megacities severely intensified the urban heat island phenomenon. Giving the contributions of pavement on the deterioration of urban heat island in megacities, this literature review synthesized the state-of-the-art potential strategies of pavement cooling technologies and applications to mitigate the urban heat island effect. Firstly, the optical-thermal balance on surface and the interior thermal behavior of pavement were comprehensively analyzed. Afterwards, this paper redefined the cool pavement technologies as the passive mitigation strategies, involved the application of reflective pavement, evaporation pavement, heat-induced pavement and phase change materials. Especially, urban canyon impact and urban design were emphasized, which tended to be neglected on the implementations of cool pavement. In addition, the solar collector technologies on the pavement were proposed to sustainably reuse solar energy, acting as active strategies and renewable sources. Typically, representatives of solar collectors, including heat collection and thermoelectric pavement, were described and investigated. Existing research results presented the promising potential of pavement cooling technologies to mitigate the urban heat island impact and renewable energy sustainability. Moreover, prospects were also summarized to show the opportunities and avenues for future study.