Monitoring the Past and Future Trends of Urban Thermal Comfort Conditions Through a New Methodology

This study is aimed at determining the TCCs trends in the past compared to the present whilst estimating the future conditions using a new methodology in the case of Kayseri city in the Interior Anatolia Region of Turkey. As the result of the study, all the change trends considering temporal and spatial results show that thermal comfort conditions signal warmer and higher heat stress in the past and future trends. This means human thermal sensation ranges (e.g., very cold) have replaced with the next warmer range, and their spatial distribution in percentage has also changed towards warmer. Increase in the prevalence of unfavourable thermal comfort conditions causes the decrease in the liveability indicators in especially urban areas, including serious economic loses based on energy consumption, health care expenses, and efficiency of activities. It is required that both past and expected future trends be considered in the planning and design works to make cities resilient and have higher adaptive capacity to climate change.
Source: Global Social Welfare - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research