Effects of microclimate and human parameters on outdoor thermal sensation in the high-density tropical context of Dhaka

Sharmin, Tania ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6229-2035 and Steemers, Koen 2020. Effects of microclimate and human parameters on outdoor thermal sensation in the high-density tropical context of Dhaka. International Journal of Biometeorology 64 (2) , pp. 187-203. 10.1007/s00484-018-1607-2

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Abstract

A thermal comfort questionnaire survey was carried out in the high-density, tropical city Dhaka. Comfort responses from over 1300 subjects were collected at six different sites, alongside meteorological parameters. The effect of personal and psychological parameters was examined in order to develop predictive models. Personal parameters included: gender, age, activity, profession-type (indoor or outdoor-based), exposure to air-conditioned space and sweat-levels. Psychological parameters, such as ‘the reason for visiting the place’ and ‘next destination is air-conditioned’, had statistically significant effects on thermal sensation. Other parameters, such as ‘body type’, ‘body exposure to sun’, ‘time living in Dhaka’, ‘travelling in last_30 min’, and ‘hot food’ did not have any significant impact. Respondents’ humidity, wind speed and solar radiation sensation had profound impacts and people were found willing to adjust to the thermal situations with adaptive behaviour. Based on actual sensation votes from the survey, empirical models are developed to predict outdoor thermal sensation in the case-study areas. Ordinal linear regression techniques are applied for predicting thermal sensation by considering meteorological and personal conditions of the field survey. The inclusion of personal and weather opinion factors produced an improvement in models based on meteorological factors. The models were compared with the actual thermal sensation using the cross-tabulation technique. The predictivity of the three models (meteorological, thermos-physiological and combined parameter) as expressed by gamma co-efficient were 0.575, 0.636 and 0.727 respectively. In all three models, better predictability was observed in the ‘Slightly Warm’ (71% in meteorological model) and ‘Hot’ (64.9% in combined parameter model) categories – the most important ones in a hot-humid climate.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Architecture
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Outdoor thermal comfort . Questionnaire survey . Thermal sensation vote (TSV) . Predictive model . Tropical climate
Additional Information:	Special Issue: Subjective approaches to thermal perception This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.
Publisher:	Springer Verlag
ISSN:	0020-7128
Funders:	Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future Award
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	10 October 2019
Date of Acceptance:	25 August 2018
Last Modified:	05 May 2023 00:21
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/125936

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