Evaluation of Urban Thermal Environment Using Subject's Perception for Microclimate

Abstract

Ryo SAKAI， Makoto NAKAYOSHI， Takuya ITAKURA，and Hiroya SHIMOZAWAWe propose a new framework for the evaluation of urban thermal environment not using any meteorological sensors but only human sensory organs; collecting the big data on citizens' perceptions on the microclimate they are exposed and analysing them statistically to obtain spatially-rich information on urban thermal environment. To clarify the effectiveness of the proposed framework, we investigated the accuracy of our sensory organ and thermal receptor by correlating the subjects' thermal/comfort sensations and perceptions for each meteorological variables to actually measured ones. Our thermal/comfort sensation are highly correlated to the thermal stress index, SET*. In addition, our perceptions for wind speed and solar radiation were also reasonably correlated with wind speed and mean shortwave radiation measured by convectional meteorological sensors.