Methodology for assessing cycling comfort during a smart city development

Abstract

Smart city development that encourages more bicycles on the road will pave way for a city with an energy-efficient transport. In this direction, the current work involves developing a cycling comfort matrix based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD). CFD simulations of an urban layout (Niigata city in Japan) under different meteorological conditions (wind directions) enables us to measure cycling comfort through: (a) the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) a thermal comfort measure and (b) the Turbulence Intensity (TI). Work involves validation of CFD wind prediction with measured experimental data. Results show that during the summer time, the higher wind velocity regions will provide thermal comfort to cyclist (near-zero PMV regions), but such zones also tend to have higher TI (due to high gradients near the buildings at high wind speed) which may be unsafe. This work has the prospect of both aiding in planning of new cycle routes and developing smart urban building layouts.