Monitoring thermal comfort on urban spaces with varying greenery density in Santiago of Chile during the hottest summer in the last 30 years

Abstract

Climate change mitigation measures are a current need to achieve sustainable cities. Scientific knowledge about thermal stress of the urban fabrics with different greening patches might be useful input for urban planning and the real estate market. The purpose of the paper is to compare the thermal comfort of urban spaces with varying greenery density in the occurrence of an extreme summer event. Santiago of Chile has a mild climate, quite similar to other cities in the world so an index obtained from monitoring might be useful to share with others. Monitoring with hygro-thermometers were used to measure ambient air temperature and relative humidity on the hottest summer during the last 30 years. Infrared images such as LANDSAT 8 provides a spatial distribution of heating in middle summer 2017. The method considered both spatial and time scales to analyze thermal stress on types of outdoor spaces: a sunny one, a canyon and one in a park. Findings show proportional hygro-thermal values between those spaces. Thermal comfort is also affected by greenery density in every outdoor space reaching stress in some of them which is quite relevant under extreme summer temperatures along three decades. Some conclusions highlight ranges in values obtained from monitoring and bioclimatic tools appropriate for urban and environmental planning in order to get climate change mitigation. Matching outdoor space and greenery densities could be an interesting point for sustainable architecture and urban design.