Launched in 2017, the Cooling Singapore project is a collaboration between the Singapore-ETH Centre (SEC), SMU, NUS and other academic institutions to study Singapore's urban climate and cooling measures. SMU Associate Professor of Science, Technology and Society Winston Chow, co-principal investigator of the research team, said that their findings show that daytime temperatures across the island are lowest at 7am, and that daylight exposure is no longer the main factor affecting temperatures. He pointed out that a significant portion of the heat in residential areas comes from the buildings themselves, both due to building materials such as concrete, glass and asphalt that are not conducive to heat dissipation, and the heat exhaust from air conditioners that emit heat from the inside out. These are the main factors that contribute to the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI) in residential areas, where temperatures are higher in urban areas than in the surrounding suburbs.
