Perceived temperature and heat mitigation methods in cities

Supervisors: Moreno Colombo, Edy Portmann

Student: Katrin Horn

Project status: Finished

Year: 2022

It always gets warm in summer. In the cities it is usually even warmer than in the countryside. The heat is sometimes unbearable. This effect is called the urban heat island (UHI) effect. That is why many researchers have come up with cooling methods to make the city cooler and thus more pleasant for the inhabitants. When it is hot in summer, we are glad when there is a breeze because then the temperature seems less warm to us. In this case, the perception of the temperature is not the same as the measured temperature. The perceived temperature depends on the measured temperature, but also on the humidity, the wind speed and radiation. This thesis did a literature review on urban cooling methods, their assessment methods, and perceived temperature. With these basics the HICOOL model was developed and superficially tested. The HICOOL model is a human-centered evaluation method which takes the perceived temperature as an assessment parameter expressed using the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI). The HICOOL model is an ex post evaluation method with the goal to easily evaluate localized urban cooling method on the basis of the perceived temperature. The HICOOL model is better than existing methods in situations where one wants to decide after the implementation of a heat mitigation method to use an evaluation method and where one wants to compare different heat mitigation models. It should be preferred for those situations, compared to other models.

Keywords: Urban heat islands, perceived temperature, perceptual computing

Document: report.pdf