Tokyo Institute of Technology · Environmental Science
Professor Takashi Asawa's research lab focuses on urban environmental sustainability, particularly the mitigation of urban heat islands (UHI) and the enhancement of energy efficiency in built environments. The lab investigates microclimate regulation through urban vegetation, passive cooling strategies, and building design, integrating field measurements, lysimeter experiments, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling. Key research directions include urban tree water balance, antimicrobial resistance in animal pathogens, and bibliometric analysis of sustainable building technologies. The lab emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches combining environmental science, urban planning, and engineering to develop practical solutions for climate-resilient cities.
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
Street and garden trees in urban areas are often exposed to advection of strong vapour pressure deficit (VPD) air that can raise the whole-tree transpiration rate (ET), known as the oasis effect. However, urban trees tend to have small soil volume compared with natural conditions, and so they are believed to strongly regulate stomata. ET characteristics of such urban trees have not been well understood because of a lack of reliable measurement methods. Therefore, we propose a novel weighing lysi
Minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of 20 antimicrobial agents were determined for 67 field strains of Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae isolated from the lungs of piglets with pleuropneumonia during the period 1992 to 1994, in Japan. Of these 67 strains, all 29 strains that were identified as serotypes 1 and 7 were resistant to chloramphenicol and tiamphenicol, whereas all of those identified as serotypes 2, 5 and 8 were susceptible to these antibiotics. Furthermore, 20 of 23 streptomycin-re
The number of scientific papers has dramatically increased in recent years; however, such a huge number of papers often become difficult to review qualitatively because of limited time and cost. A text-mining-based bibliometric analysis method is developed to provide a comprehensive overview of passive cooling methods used in buildings in hot and humid climates. First, a comprehensive overview analysis is conducted to clarify the trends in studies on passive cooling methods between 1970 and 2022
This study investigated the behavioral characteristics of both window opening and air conditioning use at a residential area having leafy canopy. Window opening and air conditioning use were measured at the living and dining rooms of each house for four months during summer. Influence factors, including the outdoor microclimate, on these behaviors were analyzed using statistics analyses, considering household differences. Analysis of variance showed that the behavioral patterns of the window ope
• Effective strategies for UHI mitigation and building energy saving were evaluated. • Pavement, rooftop replacement and tree planting were effective in UHI mitigation. • Insulation thickness and AC temperature were important for building energy savings. • Planting large deciduous trees was recommended as optimal single strategy. • Recommendations of strategy combinations were finally determined. The urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon and high building energy consumption are increasingly being a
Urban surface albedo is important for investigating urban surface–atmosphere radiative heat exchanges. For modeling surface energy balance (SEB) at local and neighborhood scales, ground or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based multispectral remote sensing (RS) can be used to obtain high-spatial-resolution multispectral information for both horizontal and vertical urban surfaces. The existing narrow-to-broadband (NTB) conversion models, developed for satellite/high-altitude observation and large ho
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