Climate-sensitive urban growth: Outdoor thermal comfort as an indicator for the design of urban spaces

Abstract

Urban climate conditions affect how cities will develop in the future, not only because of the impact on the environment or on the energy consumption of buildings, but also on outdoor human comfort. The configuration of buildings is one of the main factors that influence the different microclimates in the city. Understanding and especially being able to predict and manipulate these urban microclimates may help improve different aspects of urban life including the outdoor thermal comfort. Because of this, it is possible to use indices of outdoor thermal conform to understand when and how the configurations of building affect the microclimate conditions. This paper describes a method that; (i) enables the integration of microclimate data into the creation of new urban forms using outdoor thermal comfort as an indicator, and (ii) translates this knowledge into a parameterized design-feedback tool. In this way, it will be possible to support the design process by automated tools that explore design spaces of urban forms according to measurements and empirical findings on the relationship between microclimate data and the building geometries.