Energy sustainability of urban areas by green systems: applied thermodynamic entropy and strategic modelling means

Global warming, anthropogenic pressure, and urban expansion at the expense of green spaces are leading to an increase in the incidence of urban heat islands, creating discomfort and health issue for citizens. This present research aimed at quantifying the impact of nature-based solutions to support decision-making processes in sustainable energy action plans. A simple method is provided linking applied thermodynamics to physics-informed modelling of urban built-up and green areas, high-resolution climate model at urban scale, greenery modeling, spatial georeferencing techniques for energy and entropy exchanges evaluation in urban built-up areas, with and without vegetation. This allows the outdoor climate conditions and thermo-hygrometric well-being improvement, reducing the workload of cooling plant-systems in buildings, and entropy flux to the environment. Finalization and post-processing of obtained results, allows the definition of entropy footprints. Main findings show decreasing of greenery’s contribution for different scenarios, referred to different climatological dataset, but an increase in entropy that becomes higher for the scenario with higher emissions. The comparison between the entropy footprints values for different urban zones, can be a useful support to public administrations, stakeholders, and local governments for planning proactive resilient cities and anthropogenic impact reduction and climate change mitigation.