Field Survey on Local Thermal Comfort of Students at a University Campus: A Case Study in Shanghai

Abstract

University campuses have various functional outdoor spaces characterized by diversified spatial morphology. This study focuses on the local thermal environment of a university campus by conducting fixed weather station monitoring and a mobile survey on a typical summer day. Questionnaire results of college students accompanied by the surrounding climatic conditions reveal obvious linear relationships between thermal sensation voting (TSV) and thermal index physiological equivalent temperature (PET). The range from 29.16 °C to 32.04 °C of the PET is discussed as evaluating the thermal neutral sensation. The PET variations at nine test sites are different due to their different surrounding environments. Mobile survey results across the whole university campus emphasize that the PET varied with time and space in local zones. Spatial differences in the thermal environment are small at 9:00 and larger at 14:00. A correlation analysis of the local Ta and relative humidity (RH) reveals the different effects of spatial morphology characteristic parameters. After calculating the averaged PET values of local zones, problem zones with a higher PET exceeding the thermal neutral limit are recognized. Appropriate optimization on the geometry layouts and land cover patterns is proposed, which would help guide environmentally comfortable university campus design.