Sentosa unveils cooling plans: Misting stations, more greenery and cooler floors

SINGAPORE – To help Sentosa visitors cope with Singapore’s heat, forms of respite such as misting sprays, cooler pavements, and grassy roofs will pop up on the resort island over the next five years.

On Oct 7, the Sentosa Development Corporation (SDC) launched its islandwide Cooling Sentosa road map, a few months after a space fitted with heat relief solutions was trialled on Siloso Beach and a cooler, greener mall opened in Resorts World Sentosa (RWS).

Since June, a section of the beach near Rumours Beach Club at Siloso Beach has had a wide mural fitted with a misting system that offers beachgoers some respite from the heat. The mural and floor have been coated with heat-reflective cool paint that can lower surface temperatures by up to 2 deg C.

Following up from this Siloso Beach cool node, nine more such spaces will pepper the recreational island from now to 2030.

The spaces – mainly along the beaches and visitor hot spots – may not have the same cooling features, as it depends on the needs of every location, and newer cooling technologies could be tested at those sites, said Mr Michael Ma, assistant chief executive of SDC.

This suite of cooling interventions will ensure that visitors spend a longer time exploring the recreational island, instead of losing stamina from the stifling heat.

“The Sentosa cooling network is to give visitors a chance to take respite at purpose-built locations... We don’t want a case where the heat overwhelms them, and they call it a day,” Mr Ma told reporters at a media briefing on Sept 24.

Sentosa is among the first tourist attractions to put in investments to address rising temperatures and safeguard visitors’ well-being. These measures also aim to reduce reliance on air-conditioning.

In 2026, a second cool node will be set up at the Central Beach Bazaar forecourt, which is part of a colourful space that houses food kiosks and hosts Singapore’s only daily fireworks and musical fountain shows.

Located next to Beach Station, the forecourt spanning half a football field will have parasols and trees for shading, benches for resting, fans, a misting system and pavement material that absorbs less heat. 

At the same time, more fans, water coolers, trees and soil-less grassy roofs will be installed and planted islandwide to alleviate urban heat.

Currently, 4,250 sq m of grassy, soil-less roofs cover shaded areas of places such as Palawan Kidz City, Sentosa Sensoryscape and the Sentosa Cove Village arrival plaza.

The plants act as insulation, reducing the amount of heat absorbed by the roofs. This results in cooler roof surfaces, alleviating the urban heat effect, where urban areas are warmer than rural areas.

By early 2026, about 2,900 sq m of these green roofs will be added to the covered walkways around Imbiah Lookout, Siloso Point and the beaches.

Apart from the Siloso Beach node, the other cooling space that exists is the new Weave mall under RWS, which opened in July. The three-storey Weave has been classified as a “cool zone” as it integrates climate-friendly design into the building while doubling as an attraction.

The mall is covered with a special translucent roofing that blocks more than 80 per cent of the sun’s heat while allowing in natural light.

To reduce reliance on air-conditioning, chilled water by-product from the hotels’ heating system is redirected to create cool air for the mall. Additionally, large fans improve air circulation, while jet fans shoot wind, creating comfortable air movement in the mall.

These measures allow Weave’s temperature to be 5 deg C cooler than the outside.

To find out how hot it can get on Sentosa, SDC appointed a consultant in March 2025 to map out every inch of the island using sensors and virtual environmental modelling.

During the hottest hours of each day, consultants from Atelier Ten used equipment to measure humidity, wind speed and the sun’s radiation, among other parameters.

The study found that visitors in places such as the Resorts World Sentosa plaza, Tanjong Beach carpark and Fort Siloso gateway can feel like they are baking in temperatures higher than 50 deg C, even if the air temperature is in the 30s.

The consultants were mapping the “feels-like” temperature of several spots, known as the physiological equivalent temperature (PET). The PET takes into account air temperature, humidity, wind, sunlight, as well as visitors’ clothing insulation and level of activity.

The built-up tourist spots tend to be hotter, exceeding 45 deg C in PET. Urban structures, concrete and asphalt roads absorb and radiate heat. Such temperatures under the index cause people, even those acclimatised, to feel oppressed by the heat.

The vegetated, nature-rich parts of the island, such as the hilly Mount Imbiah and Mount Serapong, next to the golf course, recorded cooler conditions, with a PET index in the 30s.

This is the temperature range that Cooling Sentosa aspires towards. SDC is setting up the 10 cooling spaces in hopes that the solutions will reduce PET in those vicinities by at least 4 deg C, said Mr Ma, who oversees business and digital technology at the corporation.

The consultant firm also found that the Sentosa Sensoryscape – a two-tiered walking thoroughfare linking RWS and the island’s beaches – serves as a cool oasis next to its warmer neighbours.

This is because the multisensory attraction happens to be aligned with the wind direction. The 350m-long path creates a north-east, south-west wind corridor along the central spine of the island, enabling wind flow.

Using the resort island as a space to experiment with and fine-tune novel cooling solutions is also a major component of the road map, said Mr Ma.

To that end, SDC has partnered two companies that will trial their solutions on the island for six months. This is part of a sustainability innovation challenge under Enterprise Singapore.

One of the two is local firm Envicom, which has created a type of pavement material – resembling tiles – that has a 20 per cent lower surface temperature than ordinary pavements.

The material is composed of an assortment of recycled components that have been modified to provide heat-reflective and insulative qualities. It effectively transfers heat from the surface down to the underlying soil and sand.

This innovation builds on the principle that heat naturally flows from hotter to cooler surfaces.

From November, Envicom’s solution will be tested at a stretch of Siloso Beach, at the rest area next to Bikini Bar.

If promising, such solutions can be part of upcoming cool nodes, said Mr Ma. The trial site happens to be located within the future Siloso Beach Rest Stop cool node, to be set up by 2027. The other company is Delta Sirius, which will be trialling a cool coating for six months starting in October.

Mr Ma added that some existing solutions on the island have room for improvement. At the existing Siloso Beach cool node, for example, winds may blow the fine mists upwards, missing beachgoers.

The features on the cool node, which also include parasols and seats, are on trial until April 2026.

SDC said it will look into lessons from the Siloso Beach cool node to determine the future use of the ­area.

Sentosa is also working with NUS Cities and the NUS Centre for Nature-based Climate Solutions to set up a microforest at the Central Beach Bazaar forecourt cool node.

As part of the Greater Sentosa Master Plan, the islandwide study by Atelier Ten will guide future infrastructural development on the island that prioritises visitors’ comfort amid rising temperatures, said Mr Ma.

He did not reveal what such future urban designs could look like under the master plan, which aims to redevelop Sentosa and Pulau Brani as world-class leisure destinations.

Climate and health experts welcomed Sentosa’s road map.

Singapore Management University professor of urban climate Winston Chow said: “Instead of piecemeal solutions, we see a scalable solution in cool nodes that allow visitors the space to explore the island, but also areas of shelter and respite from the year-round heat that many here in Singapore are feeling and experiencing.”

The next step is to continuously monitor the effectiveness of the solutions and track visitors’ responses to the cool nodes, said Associate Professor Jason Lee, director of the NUS Heat Resilience and Performance Centre.

Both experts added that misting systems are most effective in places with low humidity and wind, where the fine mist evaporates from the skin and removes heat. Singapore tends to have high humidity, which means evaporation is limited.

“I would expect humidity to be already high near the beaches, so I am a bit unsure about the effectiveness of the mist. The sea breeze and installing fans could promote evaporative cooling,” added Prof Lee, who is from NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.