Abstract
The present study sought to elaborate an empirical model of thermal comfort for medium-sized cities in subtropical climate, based on a cross-sectional survey in the city of Santa Maria, state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The research was based on the collection of meteorological, subjective and individual data collected simultaneously in August 2015, January and July 2016, which were submitted to multiple linear regression for the elaboration of the Bioclimatic Model for Subtropical Medium-Sized Cities (MBCMS). The proposed model was validated through a normality test, obtained by the measure of obliquity and kurtosis of the distribution, heteroscedasticity and covariance, as well as by the comparison between already traditional models in the literature, such as PET, SET and PMV, which were calibrated to the study area, and the results observed for MBCMS. The results presented high multiple R-squared and adjusted R-squared, 0.928 and 0.925, respectively, for the proposed model, as well as an F-statistic of 447.6. In the validation, the MBCMS presented R equal to 0.83 and an accuracy score 60% more efficient than the PET, SET and PMV indexes.
Highlights
The Brazilian population reached 190.8 million in 2010, will be approximately 208.9 million in2018 [1] and the share of the population aged >80 increased by approximately 48% between 1997 and2007
It is important to highlight that the correlations made between the physiological temperature (PET), SET* and PMV models and the Empirical Index were only for the validation period of the Model for Subtropical Medium-Sized Cities (MBCMS), of August 2015, differently from the period used by Gobo, Galvani and Wollmann (2018) [14] in the calibration of the mentioned models, in which the whole series of August 2015, January and July 2016 was used
In terms of the calculation of these models, PET one is given as the temperature equivalent to the air temperature in which the thermal balance of the human body is maintained, with the core and body temperature
Summary
The Brazilian population reached 190.8 million in 2010, will be approximately 208.9 million in. Some studies have identified a strong relationship between the BMI of acclimatized individuals and their thermal sensation [6,7,12], showing that people with lower BMI experienced greater thermal discomfort in the limbs All these individual aspects, associated to the environmental aspects of urban centers, led to the development of thermal comfort and thermal prediction studies for populations in open spaces, in order to verify the comfort and preference patterns of the population in countries like Brazil, Colombia, China, Iran, Japan, Singapore and the Mediterranean coast, during different times of the year and zones [13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24]. The present study proposes the definition of an empirical model based on the cross-sectional interviews carried out in the city of Santa Maria, state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, based on environmental, subjective and individual variables, paving the way for future studies that promote the improvement and adequacy of this model in order to meet a wider application demand in subtropical regions
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