Subjective Human Perception of Open Urban Spaces in the Brazilian Subtropical Climate: A First Approach

Abstract

This research concerns a first approach to adapt the thermal comfort bands of the Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET), New Standard Effective Temperature (SET), and Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) indices to Santa Maria's population, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, on the basis of the application of perception/sensation questionnaires to inhabitants while, at the same time, recording meteorological attribute data. Meteorological and thermal sensation data were collected from an automatic weather station installed on paved ground in the downtown area, which contained the following sensors: a scale gauge; a global radiation sensor; a temperature and humidity sensor; a speed and wind direction sensor; a gray globe thermometer. First of all, air temperature, gray globe temperature, relative air humidity, wind speed, wind gust, global solar radiation and precipitation were collected. People were interviewed using a questionnaire adapted from the model established by ISO 10551. The results demonstrated the efficiency of the linear regression model and the adequacy of the interpretive indexes, presenting results different from those analyzed by other authors in different climatic zones. These differences meet the analyzed literature and attest to the effectiveness of the calibration method of the PET, SET, and PMV indices for the Brazilian subtropical climate. After calibration, the PET index hit rate increased from 32.8% to 69.3%. The SET index, which had an initial hit rate of 34.6% before calibration, reached a hit-rate of 64.9%, while the PMV index increased from 35.9% to 58.7%.

Beyond Singular Climatic Variables—Identifying the Dynamics of Wholesome Thermo-Physiological Factors for Existing/Future Human Thermal Comfort during Hot Dry Mediterranean Summers

“…Similar to numerous studies [17,32,35,53,54,55,56], the retrieved information was then processed through the RayMan Pro © model (RayMan Pro, Research Center Human Biometeorology; Freiburg, Germany; ) [57,58,59] to determine the PET index [9], and the recently modified PET (mPET) index [60]. …”

“…Naturally, this extension raises the opportunity for future study and refinement, including how the related levels of stress could more concretely strain the human biometeorological system. This being said, the variation and distribution of thermo-physiological indices, and their respective calibration against stress levels have already been launched within numerous studies [14,16,20,22,25,56,81,82]. …”

Empirical Model of Human Thermal Comfort in Subtropical Climates: A First Approach to the Brazilian Subtropical Index (BSI)

“…In order to obtain an even more efficient validation for the developed model, 33% of the data were used for the comparison between this and the already traditional models in the literature, including Physiologically Equivalent Temperature (PET) [54], Standard Effective Temperature (SET) *, and Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) [30], which had their classes adjusted by Gobo, Galvani and Wollmann [55] for the same climatic situation in Santa Maria.…”

“…The results are described in Table 9. It is important to note that the correlations made between the PET, SET *, PMV, and the thermal preference responses of the interviewees (Table 9) were only for the BSI validation period of August 2015, differing from the period used by Gobo, Galvani and Wollman [55] in the calibration of the mentioned models, where the whole series of August of 2015, January and July of 2016 was used.…”

Empirical Model of Thermal Comfort for Medium-Sized Cities in Subtropical Climate

“…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].…”