Cool roofs are currently being emerged as one of important mechanism to save energy in relation to the building. At present, it is usual to evaluate the performance of the cool roof by in-site measurements such as room temperature.
It is specifically proposed that the changing trends of rooftop surface temperature could be used effectively as an indicator to area-wide heating and cooling load since the thermal infrared image acquired from super high-rise building can present permanent temperature record that distinctively appears according to the rooftop color. This research idea was formulated by incorporating the concept of traditional remote sensing into rooftop temperature monitoring.
Correlations between infrared image of super high-rise building and in-situ data were investigated to compare rooftop surface temperature for a total of four different rooftop locations. The results of the correlations analyses indicate that the rooftop surface temperature by the infrared images of super high-rise building alone could be explained yielding R2 values of 0.951. This thermal infrared image acquired in oblique vantage point of super high-rise made it possible to identify area wide patterns of rooftop temperature change subject to many different colors, which cannot be acquired by traditional in-site field sampling.
The infrared image of super high-rise building breaks down the usual concept of field sampling established as a conventional cool roof performance evaluation technique. The principal advantage of rooftop thermal infrared image acquired in oblique vantage point of super high-rise building as a remote sensor is to provide, in a cost-effective manner, area-wide information required for a scattered rooftop target with different colors, utilizing wide view angle and multi-temporal data coverage. It is anticipated that this research output could be used as a valuable reference in identifying heating load by cool roof since an objective monitoring has been proposed based on the area-wide measured, fully quantitative performance of remotely sensed thermal infrared image.