Hashem Akbari (born 13 August 1949) is an

Iranian-American Iranian-Americans, also known as Persian-Americans, are United States citizens or nationals who are of Iranian ancestry, or who hold Iranian citizenship. Most Iranian-Americans arrived in the United States after 1979, as a result of the Irani ...

professor of

Architectural Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...

Civil Civil may refer to: *Civility, orderly behavior and politeness *Civic virtue, the cultivation of habits important for the success of a society *Civil (journalism) ''The Colorado Sun'' is an online news outlet based in Denver, Colorado. It lau ...

and

Environmental engineering Environmental engineering is a professional engineering Academic discipline, discipline related to environmental science. It encompasses broad Science, scientific topics like chemistry, biology, ecology, geology, hydraulics, hydrology, microbiolo ...

Concordia University Concordia University () is a Public university, public English-language research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1974 following the merger of Loyola College (Montreal), Loyola College and Sir George Williams Universit ...

. He specializes in research on the effects of

urban heat islands Urban areas usually experience the urban heat island (UHI) effect; that is, they are significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas. The temperature difference is usually larger at night than during the day, and is most apparent when winds ar ...

, cool roofs, asphalt paving materials, and

energy efficiency Energy efficiency may refer to: * Energy efficiency (physics), the ratio between the useful output and input of an energy conversion process ** Electrical efficiency, useful power output per electrical power consumed ** Mechanical efficiency, a rat ...

in building.

Biography

Akbari was born in Iran. He received his Ph.D. in

Nuclear Engineering Nuclear engineering is the engineering discipline concerned with designing and applying systems that utilize the energy released by nuclear processes. The most prominent application of nuclear engineering is the generation of electricity. Worldwide ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, in 1979. He became a U.S. citizen in 1991. He was a senior scientist and the leader of the Heat Island Group at Environmental Energy Technologies Division of

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL, Berkeley Lab) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in the Berkeley Hills, hills of Berkeley, California, United States. Established i ...

(LBNL) at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1983 to 2009. In 1985, he founded the

Urban Heat Island Urban areas usually experience the urban heat island (UHI) effect; that is, they are significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas. The temperature difference is usually larger at night than during the day, and is most apparent when winds ar ...

(UHI) group, where he worked in the areas of heat-island quantification and mitigation. In 2009, he joined

, Canada, where he founded a laboratory to measure solar spectral reflectance and

thermal emittance Thermal emittance or thermal emissivity (\varepsilon) is the ratio of the radiant emittance of heat of a specific object or surface to that of a standard black body. Emissivity and emittivity are both dimensionless quantities given in the range of ...

of common construction materials.

Research

Akbari conducted research on the potential for cool roofing and paving materials to reduce the urban heat island effect. He proposed work in adapting cool roofs as a "prescriptive" requirement for low-slope non-residential buildings in California. In 2003, his proposal was approved by the

California Energy Commission The California Energy Commission, formally the Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission, is the primary energy policy and energy planning, planning Government agency, agency for California. Created in 1974 and headquartered in S ...

; it went into effect later in October 2005. He provided basis and assistance for the development of cool roof standards in Florida, Chicago, Georgia, and Atlanta. His research has quantified the effect of cool roofs on increasing surface

albedo Albedo ( ; ) is the fraction of sunlight that is Diffuse reflection, diffusely reflected by a body. It is measured on a scale from 0 (corresponding to a black body that absorbs all incident radiation) to 1 (corresponding to a body that reflects ...

to cool the globe. The city of

Osaka is a Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan, designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the List of cities in Japan, third-most populous city in J ...

, Japan, has recently instituted a $1.7 billion () program of cool roofs,

green roofs A green roof or living roof is a roof of a building that is partially or completely covered with vegetation and a growing medium, planted over a waterproofing membrane. It may also include additional layers such as a root barrier and drainage ...

, and urban trees as a result of his research. Akbari's other contributions to the development of several international standards are: *

ASTM ASTM International, formerly known as American Society for Testing and Materials, is a standards organization that develops and publishes voluntary consensus technical international standards for a wide range of materials, products, systems and s ...

standard E1918 (Standard Test Method for Measuring Solar Reflectance of Small Horizontal and Low-Sloped Surfaces in the Field) *

standard E1980 (Standard Practice for Calculating Solar Reflectance Index of Horizontal and Low-Sloped Opaque Surfaces) *

task group to develop a standard for accelerated aging of roofing materials (ASTM D7897 – 15: Standard Practice for Laboratory Soiling and Weathering of Roofing Materials to Simulate Effects of Natural Exposure on Solar Reflectance and Thermal Emittance) *

standards for solar reflectance and thermal emittance measurements *

ASHRAE The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE ) is an American professional association seeking to advance heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration (HVAC&R) systems design and constructio ...

Standards Committees of Standard 90.1: New commercial buildings *

Standard 90.2: New residential buildings, and updated the standards to offer credits for roofs with high solar reflectance * A contributing member to

Technical Committees: TC 1.4 (Control Theory and Application), TC 1.5 (Computer Applications), TC 4.7 (Energy Calculations), TC 7.1 (Integrated Building Design), TC 7.5 (Smart Building Systems), and TC 7.6 (Building Energy Performance) He contributed to the writing of two chapters for the

Application Handbook: (1) Building Energy Monitoring and (2) Energy Use and Management. He published a guidebook for urban heat island mitigation. Akbari is one of the founding organizers of the Global Cool Cities Alliance (vice Chairman of the Board, Technical committee chair), the Cool Roof Rating Council (

CRRC CRRC Corporation Limited (known as CRRC) is a Chinese state-owned and publicly traded rolling stock manufacturer. It is the world's largest rolling stock manufacturer in terms of revenue, eclipsing its major competitors of Alstom and Siemens. ...

) (Ex-Officio Board Member, International Committee Chair), and the European Cool Roof Council (ECPR) (Ex-Officio Board Member). Also Report No. LBL-31587. In addition to the standards development, Akbari also contributed to the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations. Its job is to "provide governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies". The World Met ...

, which won the

2007 Nobel Peace Prize The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (founded in 1988) and United States former vice president, Al Gore (b. 1948) "for their efforts to build up and disseminate gr ...

References

External links

Hashem Akbari's profile
at

ResearchGate ResearchGate is a European commercial social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators. According to a 2014 study by ''Nature'' and a 2016 article in ''Times Higher Education' ...

ECPR (European Cool Roof Council)

CRRC (Cool Roofs Rating Council)

GCCA (Global Cool Cities Alliance)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Akbari, Hashem 1949 births Living people American civil engineers Academic staff of Concordia University Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory people UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni Iranian emigrants to the United States