Extract

ABSTRACT: Effective assessment of pedestrian’s thermal comfort has been a continuous endeavour
in urban climatology studies. A number of bio-meteorological indices such as PMV, OUT-SET* and
PET have been developed aiming to describe human’s thermal comfort sensation by providing
solutions to the equations governing their thermoregulations. A drawback of this approach is that these
indices are based on steady-state models and therefore can not effectively account for pedestrian’s
thermal transient process. In fact, studies have shown that steady-state models will cause problems
when applied in outdoor pedestrian thermal comfort assessment. This study presents a bottom-up
simulation approach which considers pedestrian’s dynamic and behavioural aspects in assessing their
thermal comfort conditions. A promising modelling technique, the agent-based modelling (ABM)
approach is taken to model each individual pedestrian’s detailed thermoregulatory characteristics and
also movement behaviours. A modified Two-Node Model is used to model pedestrian’s progressive
thermal adaptation to the local microclimatic condition. With a test case the study shows that the
modelled thermal transient is significantly different from the static assessment as indicated by PET,
suggesting that a combinatorial use of pedestrian’s detailed thermoregulatory parameters is a more
appropriate way to describe their actual thermal comfort condition. The present individual-based
simulation approach also allows different group of pedestrian’s to be examined and also different
environmental scenarios to be tested.

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