ON THE DESIGN OF A NEW HUMAN COMFORT INDEX

In designing the human comfort index (CI) used in Guangzhou, a Gaussian curve was adopted as the fundamental profile to develop a traw hat?model of comfort index. The model projects low or high temperatures into low index values and the moderate temperatures into high index values. Air temperature was chosen as a basic factor in the model. Other factors such as humidity, sunshine and wind speed were introduced by considering them as temperature departures to an equivalent apparent temperature (EAT). Since the index is a relative index, 25C was chosen as an ideal apparent temperature (the most comfortable state) and a maximum CI value of 100 was assigned at this temperature. While in other circumstances, the index would be lower than 100. By utilizing this model, the daily comfort index values had been calculated for Guangzhou city for 1998-1999, using mean temperature, mean humidity, mean wind speed and total hours of sunshine. Results show that the new model was reasonable and practicable. Not only could it reflect the monthly variation of human comfort in Guangzhou, but also was sensitive to short-term changes of weather conditions.

Analysis on Human Comfort of Tourism Climate in Binzhou City

According to meteorological data at Binzhou Meteorological Station during 1981 -2010, basic climate characteristics of meteorological factors （such as temperature, relative humidity and wind velocity, etc. ） related to human comfort are analyzed, and temporal-spatial distribution characteristics of human comfort in Binzhou City are studied. Then, human comfort of tourism in Binzhou City is evaluated. The impacts of each meteorological factor on comfort in different seasons and change tendency of comfort are discussed, and the optimal tourism time in Binzhou City is analyzed.

Study on Differences of Temperature and Humidity and Vertical Distribution of Human Comfort between City and Countryside of Heilongjiang Province in Summer

[ Objective] The research aimed to study differences of temperature and humidity and vertical distribution of human comfort between city and countryside of Heilongjiang in summer. [Method] By using temperature, humidity and wind velocity data at 10 and 70 m of two iron towers in urban and rural districts of Heilongjiang from June 1 to August 31,2010, the characteristics at temperature and humidity fields and change rule of human comfort index in urban and rural areas in summer were analyzed. [Result] Compared with rural areas, heat island effect of urban districts was obvious, and it was the strongest during 21：00 -23：00 and the weakest during 05：00 -06：00. Daily change rules of wind velocity at 10 m of two anemometer towers were basically consistent. Wind velocity was big at daytime and small at night. Daily change of wind velocity at 70 m of urban districts was consistent with that at 10 m, while wind velocity change at 70 m of rural areas was different from that at 10 m, which had obvious high-altitude wind characteristics. Daily change rules of humidity in two towers were basically consistent, and occurrence time of extremum at 70 m delayed for 1 h. At vertical height, humidity at 10 m was higher than that at 70 m at daytime, and was lower than that at 70 m at night. [ Conclusion] The city had obvious wet island effect during 00：00 -06：00 and dry island effect at nightfall. Comfort index of urban districts was higher than that in rural areas, and difference was the maximum during 19：00 -21：00. Comfort index at 10 m was higher than that at 70 m at daytime in the city and countryside, and was lower than that at 70 m at night. Occurrence frequencies of Grade Zero of comfort at 10 and 70 m of urban districts were both over 60%, while occurrence frequency of ≥ Grade Three of comfort was very small. At vertical height, human comfort had small difference at night. At daytime, as height rise, human comfort index significantly declined, and human feeling was more comfortable than that at low layer.

Human Comfort of the Phyllostachys heterocycla Forest in Summer

This study analyzed the microclimate factors and human comfort index inside and outside the Phyl ostachys heterocycla forest of Qishan Natiional Forest Park in summer,and compared them with those of the city square.The results showed that:(1)In terms of the average daily temperature,the inner and outer forests and the city square ranked as follows:city square>outer forest>inner forest.The temperature of the inner forest was 5.41–10.31°C lower than that of the city square,and the temperature of the outer forest was 4.41–9.51°C lower than that of the city square.(2)In terms of the average daily relative humidity,the inner and outer forests and the city square ranked as follows:city square<outer forest<inner forest.Compared with the city sqaure,the inner forest had an increase of 8.21–31.51%in relative humidity,and the outer forest had an increase of 8.11–26.16%in relative humidity.(3)In terms of the average daily wind speed,the inner and outer forests and the city square ranked as follows:city square>outer forest>inner forest.The daily average value of the city square was 42%and 37%higher than that of the inner and outer forests,and the daily average value of the outer forest was 21%higher than that of the inner forest.(4)In terms of the daily average illumination intensity,the inner and outer forests and the square ranked as follows:city square>outer forest>inner forest.The daily average value of the city square was 97.38%and 74.33%higher than that of the inner and outer forests,and the daily average value of the outer forest was 89.78%higher than that of the inner forest.

Human Comfort Evaluation of a Steel-Concrete Composite Building Subjected to Aerobics

The current steel-concrete composite floors design might be susceptible to the resonance phenomenon, causing undesirable vibrations in the frequency range that is the most noticeable to humans, i.e., 4 Hz to 8 Hz. This way, the main objective of this work is to investigate the dynamic structural behaviour of a steel-concrete composite multi-storey building when subjected to human rhythmic activities （aerobics）. The studied structural model represents a typical interior floor bay of a commercial building used for gym and is composed by three floor levels spanning 20 m by 20 m, with a total area of 3×400 m2. An extensive parametric study was developed aiming to obtain the peak accelerations, RMS （root mean square） accelerations and VDV （vibration dose value） values, based on two different mathematical formulations. The human comfort of the building was analysed and the vibration transmissibility related to the steel columns was verified. Based on the found results, the investigated structural model presented high vibration levels that compromise the human comfort.

A Comparison of Human Comfort Between the Inner and Outer Fokienia hodginsii Forests and the Urban Area in Autumn

This study observed the temperature,relative humidity,and wind speed of the inner and outer Fokienia hodginsii forests and the urban area in autumn,used the comprehensive comfort index to represent human comfort,compared the differences in the microclimates between the inner and outer forests and the urban area,and evaluated the impacts of the 3 plots on the comfort level of people’s outdoor activities.The results showed that: The inner forest had a drop in temperature ranging 0.7℃ to 1.5 ℃ compared with the outer forest;the outer forest had a drop in temperature ranging 0.6℃ to 3.5℃ compared with the urban area;the relative humidity of the inner forest was 0.04–5% higher than that of the outer forest,and 21.7–37.1% higher than that of the urban area;the wind speed of the inner forest was 56% lower than that of the urban area,and 35% lower than that of the outer forest.In short,the inner forest,where people felt most comfortable,was a better place for developing outdoor activities in autumn.

Human Comfort of the Inner and Outer Fokienia hodginsii Forests in Summer

This study analyzed the microclimate factors and human comfort index of the inner and outer Fokienia hodginsii forests and of a city square.The results showed that:① In terms of the average daily temperature,the inner and outer forests and the city square ranked as follows: square > outer forest > inner forest.The temperature of the inner forest was 8.21–11.73℃ lower than that of the city square,and the temperature of the outer forest was 7.41–10.34℃ lower than that of the city square.The inner forest was cooled by 24.21% and 1.37% respectively than the outer forest and the city square.② In terms of the average daily relative humidity,the inner and outer forests and the city square ranked as follows: square < outer forest < inner forest.The average daily relative humidity of the inner forest,the outer forest,and the city square was 68.57,84.91,and 88.27,respectively.③ In terms of the average daily wind speed,the inner and outer forests and the city square ranked as: square > outer forest > inner forest.Their daily variation ranges were 0–0.75,0.18–0.43,and 0.12–0.31 m/s,respectively.④ In terms of the daily average illumination intensity,the inner and outer forests and the square ranked as: square > outer forest > inner forest.Their average daily illumination intensities were 371.68,4,582.01,and 17,641.63 lux,respectively.

Human Comfort Instrument Design Based on Embedded

The traditional human comfort meter has the following defects: the interface is not uniform;the operation is cumbersome and complicated;the interface is unfriendly, and the stability and adaptability are poor. This paper presents a design scheme for human comfort instrument based on embedded system, using S3C2440 embedded development board and the sensors to collect the real-time temperature, relative humidity and wind speed data and to process the collecting data;then obtaining the human body comfort value according to the basic algorithm of human body comfort instrument;giving the human comfort conclusion according to the diastolic index range of human comfort, and showing the temperature and humidity, wind speed, comfort value and conclusion through writing the Qt graphical user interface program. At the same time, the human comfort instrument has the data storage function. The human comfort instrument is high in integration, strong in real time, high in sensitivity, stable and reliable, and it meets the development goals of the intelligent meteorological service, and meets the demand of the meteorological service that is closer to life, and it has broad development prospect.

Effect of Urbanization and Industrialization Processes on Outdoor Thermal Human Comfort in Egypt

Detailed studies on the effect of urbanization and industrialization processes on outdoor thermal human com- fort in Greater Cairo region, Egypt have been performed in this study. Four different districts in Greater Cairo region have been selected to represent rural, suburban, typical urban and industrial areas. The data of surface dry, wet bulb temperatures and wind speed for two different periods represent non-urbanized and urbanized periods have been used. Discomfort indices for the two periods have been calculated for the four districts. The study revealed that urbanization and industrialization processes have resulted in the distinctly modification of human comfortable at all districts. The feeling of quite comfortable reduced from the old non-urbanized period to the recent urbanized period at the four districts. During the recent urbanized period, the rural area has the highest total number of quite comfortable hours while both urban and industrial areas have the lowest total number of hours. The serious hot uncomfortable didn’t occur at all districts during the old non-urbanized period while during the recent urbanized period, all people had felt extreme serious hot uncomfortable only at urban and industrial areas. It could be concluded that the urbanization and industriali-zation processes cause increase of human serious hot uncomfortable feeling which in turn leads to more hin-dering for the human activities while the rural conditions leads to optimum weather comfort for further and more human activities.

Changing Characteristics of Comfort Index of Human Body in Bengbu City in the Past 40 Years under the Background of Climate Change

Based on the daily meteorological data of Bengbu City during 1981-2020,the changing characteristics of three elements needed for the calculation of the comfort index of human body(CIHB)were discussed,and daily CIHB was classified and discussed.The results show that from 1981 to 2020,annual average temperature tended to increase significantly.Annual average wind speed and relative humidity showed a decreasing trend before 2011 but an increasing trend after 2011.The duration of the four seasons in Bengbu City mainly rose in spring,reduced in winter,declined first and then increased in summer,and rose first and then decreased in autumn.As CIHB was at grades 1 and 9(the most uncomfortable),the three factors had different effects on them.For cold weather,the influence of relative humidity and wind speed on CIHB can not be ignored besides temperature.In hot weather,the influence of temperature was dominant,and the change of annual average temperature could well correspond to the change in the number of very hot days.In the context of climate warming,the number of cold days tended to decline generally,but it was larger in the years with fewer very cold days.Under the background of climate warming,there was no obvious change in the number of days of the overall comfort of human body.The number of hot days was closely related to the duration of summer,and the number of days of grade 8 rose significantly in the years with an increase in the duration of summer.

Impacts of Roof/Ground Mitigation Strategies on Improving the Urban Thermal Environment and Human Comfort over the Yangtze River Delta, China

The combined effects of global warming and the urban heat islands exacerbate the risk of urban heat stress. It is crucial to implement effective cooling measures in urban areas to improve the comfort of the thermal environment. In this study, the Weather Research and Forecasting Model(WRF), coupled with a single-layer Urban Canopy Model(UCM), was used to study the impact of heat mitigation strategies. In addition, a 5-km resolution land-cover dataset for China(ChinaLC), which is based on satellite remote sensing data, was adjusted and used, and 18 groups of numerical experiments were designed, to increase the albedo and vegetation fraction of roof/ground parameters. The experiments were conducted for four heatwave events that occurred in the summer of 2013 in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration of China. The simulated results demonstrated that, for the single roof/ground schemes, the mitigation effects were directly proportional to the albedo and greening. Among all the experimental schemes, the superposed schemes presented better cooling effects. For the ground greening scheme, with similar net radiation flux and latent heat flux, its storage heat was lower than that of the roof greening scheme, resulting in more energy flux into the atmosphere, and its daytime cooling effect was not as good as that of the roof greening scheme. In terms of human thermal comfort(HTC), the improvement achieved by the ground greening scheme was better than any other single roof/ground schemes, because the increase in the relative humidity was small. The comprehensive evaluation of the mitigation effects of different schemes on the thermal environment presented in this paper provides a theoretical basis for improving the urban environment through rational urban planning and construction.

A Preliminary Study on Effects of Four Urban Greenbelt Types on Human Comfort in Shenzhen,P.R.China

Four urban greenbelt types including roadside greenbelt, resident-area greenbelt, landscape forest, and forest park, were simultaneously investigated in Shenzhen, China, in such measures as air temperature, air humidity, wind speed, air anion ratio, and inhalabal particle concentration, which were strongly related with pleasing feeling of human body. The results show that the average air temperature in both forest park and landscape forest is much closer to the pleasing feeling of human body temperature than that of the rest two greenbelts, where it is 1.782 ℃ and 0.837℃ in forest park as well as 3.084 ℃ and 2.140 ℃ in landscape forest less than that of roadside and resident-area greenbelts, respectively. In terms of mean air humidity, forest park and landscape forest are 3.034% and 7.563% higher than that of roadside greenbelt, and 1.205% and 5.734% higher than that of resident-area greenbelt, respectively, implying a sound humidity feeling of human comfort in the former two types. The air cleanness holds a descending rank as forest park, landscape forest, resident-area greenbelt, and roadside greenbelt, whereas the rank in inhalable particle concentration is completely reverse. In general, landscape forest and forest park that mainly consist of trees have a comparatively higher feeling of human comfort whereas roadside and resident-area greenbelts fluctuate irregularly to some extent for the measures studied. The four greenbelt types investigated could be summarized in human comfort as the following descending rank, forest park, landscape forest, resident-area greenbelt, and roadside greenbelt.

A human comfort prediction method for indoor personnel based on time-series analysis

In buildings,the heating ventilation and air conditioning system(HVAC)creates a comfortable environment for indoor occupants by setting a temperature strategy.However,this approach leads to unreasonable indoor environmental comfort and wasted energy because it does not dynamically adjust to changes in environmental and has a long response time.In this study,a high-precision human comfort prediction method for indoor personnel based on time-series analysis is proposed as the control strategy for HVAC systems.The method includes the data pre-processing module,the class imbalance processing module,and the human comfort network model module.We propose the Human-Comfort Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory(HC-BiLSTM)network to achieve a better human comfort prediction,and the Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique for Time-series(SMOTE-TS)algorithm to solve the class imbalance problem in human comfort dataset.A public dataset collected in Pennsylvania,USA,was selected for this study to validate the performance of the proposed method.The experimental results show that the human comfort prediction method proposed in this study achieves 0.9482 and 0.9659 on Macro-averaging and Micro-averaging,respectively,which is the highest accuracy in the known related research.

Changes in human settlement environments and their drivers in valley cities located in arid and semi-arid regions:A case study of Lanzhou in Western China

Development of urban human settlement environments(HSEs)is an integral part of promoting high-quality and sustainable regional development and constructing a beautiful China.The city of Lanzhou,located at the geometric center of China,is the only provincial capital traversed by the Yellow River.Given the constraints posed by the valley topography and the need for economic development,the development of this HSE,which is located within an arid region,poses considerable challenges.Evidently,an understanding of the evolution of HSEs and drivers of changes in them contributes to high-quality,sustainable urban development in arid and semi-arid regions.An analytical model was developed using the parameters of relief degree of land surface,human comfort days,the land cover index,nighttime light index,and precipitation.This model was used in combination with population density and the gross domestic product to analyze the spatial distribution of Lanzhou's HSE and its drivers.The results showed that landscapes in Lanzhou underwent significant changes between 2000 and 2022,with an increase in building-up land(+0.946%),cultivated land(+0.134%),and forest land(+0.018%)and a decrease in grassland(-1.10%).There was significant outward expansion of the main urban zone of Lanzhou and of various county towns,with the increase in building-up land being most prominent.During this period,there were significant changes in the periphery of the core urban area and county towns in Lanzhou,with decreases moving from the urban center(the highest value)to the surrounding areas(Yongdeng County had the lowest value).The correlation between the HSE and population density grew stronger in Anning and Chengguan Districts but became weaker in Xigu and Qilihe Districts.Spatiotemporal variations in the HSE were primarily caused by climate change,followed by human activities,and were also influenced by the valley topography.Overall,the spatial distribution of population density and the HSE in Lanzhou demonstrated good consistency under the in-fluence of economic development and urbanization.

An analysis on spatial variation of urban human thermal comfort in Hangzhou, China

Urban human thermal comfort(UHTC) is affected for interacting of weather condition and underlying surface framework of urban area. Urban underlying surface temperature value and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index(NDVI) were calculated using image interpreting and supervised classification technique by ERDAS IMAGE software using 1991 and 1999 Landsat TM images data. Reference to the relational standard of assessing human thermal comfort and other meteorology data of Hangzhou City in summer, air temperature and relative humidity variation of different land types of underlying surface were inversed. By choosing discomfort index as an indictor, the spatial distribution characteristic and the spatial variation degree of UHTC were estimated and mapped on a middle scale, that is, in six districts of Hangzhou. The main characteristics of UHTC spatial variation from 1991 to 1999 were revealed using a GIS-based calculation model. The variation mechanism were analyzed and discussed from the viewpoint of city planning, construction and environmental protection.

Digital Evaluation of Sitting Posture Comfort in Human-vehicle System under Industry 4.0 Framework

Most of the previous studies on the vibration ride comfort of the human-vehicle system were focused only on one or two aspects of the investigation. A hybrid approach which integrates all kinds of investigation methods in real environment and virtual environment is described. The real experimental environment includes the WBV（whole body vibration） test, questionnaires for human subjective sensation and motion capture. The virtual experimental environment includes the theoretical calculation on simplified 5-DOF human body vibration model, the vibration simulation and analysis within ADAMS/VibrationTM module, and the digital human biomechanics and occupational health analysis in Jack software. While the real experimental environment provides realistic and accurate test results, it also serves as core and validation for the virtual experimental environment. The virtual experimental environment takes full advantages of current available vibration simulation and digital human modelling software, and makes it possible to evaluate the sitting posture comfort in a human-vehicle system with various human anthropometric parameters. How this digital evaluation system for car seat comfort design is fitted in the Industry 4.0 framework is also proposed.

Vibration Analysis and Fatigue Assessment of Floors.Part I:Human Rhythmic Activities

Structural problems associated with excessive vibration of building floor systems when subjected to human rhythmic activities have been frequent.In this context,this research work aims to develop an analysis methodology to evaluate the human comfort and assess the fatigue performance of steel-concrete composite floors when subjected to human rhythmic activities(aerobics).The investigated structural model corresponds to a steel-concrete floor with dimensions of 10 m×10 m and a total area of 100 m^(2).The numerical model developed for the dynamic analysis of the floor adopted the usual mesh refinement techniques present in finite element method(FEM)simulations implemented in the ANSYS program.The investigated floor dynamic response was calculated through the consideration of people practicing rhythmic activities on the structure,in order to verify the occurrence of excessive vibration and to assess the human comfort.The fatigue assessment is based on a linear cumulative damage rule through the use of the Rainflow-counting algorithm and S-N curves from traditional design codes.The results indicated that,in several analysed situations,the investigated floor presents excessive vibration and user’s discomfort.On the other hand,the structure service life values were higher than those proposed by the design codes,ensuring that the members,connections and joints will not fail by fatigue cracking.

An Approach to Human Adaptability towards its Built Environment: A Review

This paper deals with the human adaptability to its built environment. The built environment as we know it rarely finds itself adapting to its surrounding context, whether it be on the level of interaction with humans or the climate. Humans and nature both are in a constant state of flux;moving, changing, sensing, and reacting to their context and information they gather and perceive. A barrier is formed between the built environment and humans and nature due to the fact that their inherent characteristics are utterly contrasting. It is commonly estimated that persons in urban areas spend at least 80% of their time indoors. This suggests that the quality of the indoor environment can have a significant impact on comfort, health, and overall sense of well being. The indoor environment of buildings should thus be designed and controlled, as to provide a comfortable and healthy space for occupants. In order to maintain the quality of the indoor environment, we mechanically condition our buildings to achieve constant, uniform and comfortable environments. The maintenance of thermal equilibrium between the human body and its environment is one of the primary requirements. History of thermal comfort and climate design shows a definite relation between them and research is needed to know “What are comfort conditions?” and “How buildings could adapt themselves to these conditions”.

人工环境中“舒适”的医学意义——关于舒适与健康的思考

当今社会,人工环境的营造日渐受到重视。室内环境不仅应满足舒适性的要求,更应考虑其动态变化对人体健康与免疫力的潜在影响。本文以人居环境营造为出发点,结合已有的文献研究与中西医观点,首先列举了外部环境对人体健康及体内环境的影响,其次介绍了“舒适”营造对提高机体健康水平的作用,最后从宏观上阐述了物理环境中“舒适”对人体健康的医学意义,为本专业同医学的交叉研究提供新思路。

Thermal Sense Prediction Model for Definite Human Group in Indoor Case

In order to build a prediction model of the indoor thermal comfort for a given human group, the original predicted mean vote （PMV） equation is reconstructed and simplified, the modified PMV equation is named PMVR （PMV for region） , where five variables are needed to be fitted with the dataset of actual thermal sense of a definite human group. As the fitting algorithm, the particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to optimize the solution, and a fixed PMVR can be finally determined. Experiment results indicate that for a definite human group, PMVR is more accurate on the prediction of thermal sense compared with some other models.