Correlation analysis of thermal comfort and physiological responses under different microclimates of urban park

Abstract

Rapid urbanization has brought a range of urban environmental problems that could be harmful to human thermal comfort and health. Urban parks can improve outdoor thermal comfort significantly because of its cooling island effect. However, outdoor thermal comfort is difficult to predict because of its complex nature and there was rare research focused on human physiological thermal responses in different green spaces of urban parks. In this study, thermal comfort of 52 participants were evaluated based on questionnaire survey and physiological parameters measurements including skin temperature (SKT), oxygen saturation (SaO2), heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV) under different green spaces in parks, simultaneously with microclimate measurements. According to the regression analysis, physiological parameters were found having high accuracy in predicting human outdoor thermal comfort, with R 2 were 0.803 for SKT, 0.830 for HRV, 0.767 for HR, 0.711 for SaO2 respectively. Results demonstrated that these four physiological parameters were sensitive to microclimate changes and human outdoor comfort thermal state can be captured by monitoring them with reasonable accuracy. This research can provide reference to evaluate outdoor thermal comfort by incorporating the physiological parameters, which can also provide a design basis for creating thermal comfortable outdoor spaces in urban parks.