Outdoor human comfort in an urban climate may be affected by a wide range of parameters, including wind speed, air temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation, air quality, human activity, clothing level, age, etc. Several criteria have been developed in the wind engineering community for evaluating only the wind-induced mechanical forces on the human body and the resulting pedestrian comfort and safety. There are significant differences among the criteria used by various countries and institutions to establish threshold values for tolerable and unacceptable wind conditions even if a single parameter, such as the wind speed is used as criterion. These differences range from the speed averaging period (mean or gust) and its probability of exceedance (frequency of occurrence) to the evaluation of its magnitude (experimental or computational). The paper addresses the progress made towards the computational evaluation of pedestrian level winds. All existing criteria for wind and thermal comfort are absolute criteria, which specify the threshold values or comfort ranges for respective weather parameters. The paper will outline an approach towards the establishment of an overall comfort index taking into account, in addition to wind speed, the temperature and relative humidity in the area.
[1]
M Michiel Bottema,et al.
Wind climate and urban geometry
,
1993
.
[2]
I P Castro,et al.
NUMERICAL WIND ENGINEERING: THE WAY AHEAD ?
,
1999
.
[3]
P. Höppe.
Different aspects of assessing indoor and outdoor thermal comfort
,
2002
.
[4]
Koen Steemers,et al.
Thermal comfort in outdoor urban spaces: understanding the human parameter
,
2001
.
[5]
Theodore Stathopoulos,et al.
The numerical wind tunnel for industrial aerodynamics: Real or virtual in the new millennium?
,
2002
.
[6]
Theodore Stathopoulos,et al.
Microclimate and Downtown Open Space Activity
,
2001
.
[7]
T. Stathopoulos,et al.
Computer simulation of wind environmental conditions around buildings
,
1996
.
[8]
Peter Richards,et al.
Computational and wind tunnel modelling of mean wind loads on the Silsoe structures building
,
1992
.
[9]
Yoshihide Tominaga,et al.
Cross Comparisons of CFD Results of Wind Environment at Pedestrian Level around a High-rise Building and within a Building Complex
,
2004
.
[10]
T. Stathopoulos,et al.
Outdoor human comfort in an urban climate
,
2004
.