Analyzing the influence of urban morphological features on pedestrian thermal comfort

Abstract

This paper studied the temporal effect of urban morphological features on the pedestrian thermal comfort of a street with aid of ENVI-met model. The results show that the presence of surrounding buildings could bring drops in the average PET values of the sidewalks by up to 6.7 °C. The hourly PET values also varied considerably with neighborhood compactness, surrounding building height configuration and layout form, and their effects on thermal comfort varied considerably between E-W and non-E-W Streets. In addition, multivariate models have been formulated separately for E-W and non-E-W Streets to predict the hourly PET values based on urban morphological features and microclimatic conditions. Based upon the PET values computed from the models, a series of charts have been generated to help visually determine the total number of comfort and very hot hours that will be yielded during daytime for a street being surrounded by different combinations of urban morphological features. It was observed that a minimum of 3 comfort hours could be achieved when SH/h ratio ≥ 1.8 and BCR ≥ 47% regardless of street orientation or layout form. The findings provide valuable insights for urban planners and designers in creating thermally comfortable street environments.