Comfort In Urban Areas Research Articles

Reducing Heat and Improving Thermal Comfort through Urban Design – A Case Study in Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), in the south of Vietnam, is undergoing rapid urbanization and is one of the world's cities most affected by climate change. A comparative analysis among different scenarios for a case study located in a re-development area in HCMC revealed how urban design can contribute to reduce heat and improve thermal comfort in urban areas. Isoline mappings made with the climate modelling software ENVI-met have provided evidence that enhanced street greenery has the most remarkable impact on urban

Comportamento do usuário na valoração contingente e custo de viagem O caso do Parque das Palmeiras em Chapecó, SC, Brasil

The publication of the seventh edition of “Revista Ambiente e Agua – An Interdisciplinary Journal of Applied Science (Ambi-Agua)” demonstrates the international visibility that the journal is reaching. An unprecedented number of submissions has been received for this issue and resulted in an increased number (50%) of published articles, as compared to the first two volumes that had six articles published. This issue brings nine peer reviewed articles out of which 5 are published in English. Among those two were submitted from abroad (Nigeria and Argentina) in addition to several paper co-authors from the United States. The participation in the authorship of public universities and municipal, state and federal institutions was also significant. There were 18 authors in this issue from those institutions not considering those authors from abroad. There was also a thematic coverage expansion of articles within the interdisciplinary scope of Ambi-Agua. An example of this is an article in Engineering concerned with thermal comfort in urban areas; several submissions in environmental chemistry with two published articles (organic and inorganic chemistry); one article in the area of public health and antimicrobial resistance in aquatic ecosystem; other in sensibility to oil spilling charting in coastal islands; chemical contamination in fish due to the improper land use in Amazonia; and two articles in hydrological modeling in watersheds. Powered by the OAI-PMH protocol (Batista, 2007), which greatly enhances the visibility of the journal, in addition to the fact that Ambi-Agua appears in several international indexing systems and its free on-line availability with open access policy, the journal is being frequently consulted. In only two months (June 15 to August 15, 2008) there were 4,556 consultations with an average of approximately 500 consultations a week. These consultations came from 616 cities, 79 countries, and five continents in that period.

Perspective of the soundscape approach as a tool for urban space design

In the last decade many improvements and large applications of noise control techniques have been observed, as well as enforcement and implementation of noise legislation at national and international levels. Notwithstanding, noise in urban areas has not decreased as expected and reductions in noise levels do not necessarily lead to a better acoustic comfort in urban areas. This has increased the concern of stakeholders (population, politicians, decision makers, �) and their awareness of the harmful effects of noise. The soundscape approach, concentrating on the way that people consciously perceive their environment (namely the interactions between people and sounds), might open novel perspectives and provide further insights towards fighting noise. In this approach, complementary to the noise control engineering techniques, the participation of people is fundamental along with their involvement that complies with the requirements issued by the European directive on the assessment and management of environmental noise. This paper provides an overview of some experimental studies carried out in the field and laboratory, dealing with urban areas of Naples and Rome with particular features (historical sites, outdoor markets, pedestrian areas, tourist attractions). Noise measurements and interviews of people by questionnaires have been used to investigate the sonic environment and its influence on the recognition and quality of a urban site by the users. A laboratory procedure based on virtual scenarios accompanied by visual and audio stimuli is presented and its potential as urban design tool is discussed

Characterization of an urban area’s acoustical comfort

In this paper a global method to characterize acoustic comfort in urban areas is presented. This method takes into account the relationships between urban forms (shapes, sizes, and material surfaces), the opinions of town-users, and noise descriptors. These descriptors are deduced from a method based on time automatic detection threshold to classify four types of noise. This system allows the study of sound situation in a self-contained way over a long period (several hours). The influence of building design is estimated according to the visualization of the evolution of these descriptors in 2D and 3D maps all over the studied area. The first results show that noise levels fit well with the architectural characteristics of the buildings (facade irregularities, materials,...). To validate this method, experiments were conducted on a Bordeaux central district. The effects of an urban area’s morphology on listeners’ noise perception are analyzed from investigations carried out with people living or working in the tested site. The aim of this work is to develop a decision-assisting tool in the acoustic design of urban areas. Environmental considerations, such as noise, must be included in urban planning not only to avoid disturbance, but to provide better satisfaction in living in the city.

Trees Modify Metropolitan Climate and Noise

Human comfort in urban areas is altered by trees primarily through their influence on the exchange of radiant energy - both solar and long-wave. Although urban trees probably use large amounts of heat for transpiration, this process does not result in significantly cooler air in the vicinity of single or small groups of trees. Even low winds quickly disperse the cooled air. Outdoor spaces that receive heavy pedestrian use should be made as versatile as possible by providing both sunny and shady sites for sitting and walking. Windbreaks may reduce energy requirements for heating buildings by 10 to 25 percent. Although shade ob­viously is a benefit in summer; winter shade is a disad­vantage, and even deciduous-tree shade is significant in winter. Trees are useful for noise control primarily because they scatter sound waves, which are then absorbed by the ground. Dense forests or plantings of trees can reduce transmission of traffic noise, but if highways carrying high-speed truck traf­fic pass through residential areas, tree barriers alone cannot reduce sound levels to an acceptable maximum within about 350 feet of the highway.