Abstract
The thermal characteristics of outdoor urban spaces and the street networks connecting them are vital to the assessment of the liveability and sustainability of cities. When urban spaces are thermally comfortable, city dwellers spend more time outdoors. This has several benefits for human health and wellbeing, also reducing indoor energy consumption and contributing to local economy. Studies on outdoor thermal comfort have highlighted the need to develop interdisciplinary frameworks that integrate physical, physiological, psychological, and social parameters to assist urban planners and designers in design decisions. In this paper, an extensive literature review of outdoor thermal comfort studies over the past decade was undertaken, including both rational and adaptive thermal comfort approaches, from the contextualize the behaviour perspectives related to the use of urban space. Consequently, the paper suggests a comprehensive framework for evaluating the relationship between the quantitative and qualitative parameters linking the microclimatic environment with subjective thermal assessment and social behaviour. The framework aims to contribute to the development of exclusive thermal comfort standards for outdoor urban settings.
Highlights
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2018) warns that anthropogenic activities have caused a rise of around 1 ◦ C in global warming
The framework considers the human being in the centre of the process as an active recipient of environmental stimuli [29]. These adaptive methods were included in thermal comfort standards, such as ASHRAE 55, 2017, British Standard (BS EN 15251:2007, BS EN 16798-2), and other international standards, to fulfil the limitations associated with the steady-state approach
For the in situ field measurements, the main objective of a site survey is to capture the urban geometry and materials in terms of how they impact the local climate within the urban canopy layer (UCL); this cannot be extracted from meteorological weather data
Summary
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2018) warns that anthropogenic activities have caused a rise of around 1 ◦ C in global warming. Urban environments present a higher threat of thermal stress than rural environments, around evening time This phenomenon is referred to as an urban heat island (UHI) [11,12,13,14,15]. The application of these principles fits poorly with different climatic, cultural, and economic contexts, leading to uncomfortable local outdoor conditions [23,24] In this context, the paper critically assess the outdoor thermal comfort studies literature from a behavioural point of view, including common evaluation techniques and outdoor thermal comfort studies, paying particular attention to perceptions of outdoor thermal comfort and the use of outdoor space in the context of urban planning. The identification of knowledge gaps is followed by the proposal of a comprehensive framework for examining the behavioural aspect of outdoor thermal comfort
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