Design tools for outdoor comfort assessment

This paper discusses the questions raised by design tools development for outdoor comfort assessment. It is argued why this specific application field not only raises technical difficulties, i.e. the number of objects to be considered in traditional urban open spaces. Probably, conceptual difficulties are far more intricate. Actually, most present knowledge about thermal comfort appears largely inherited from stationary indoor experiments and calibrations. As such they neglect a number of critical aspects of urban design.