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Outdoor Comfort Analysis in a University Campus During the Warm Season and Parametric Design of Mitigation Strategies for Resilient Urban Environments

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Computer-Aided Architectural Design. Design Imperatives: The Future is Now (CAAD Futures 2021)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1465))

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Abstract

Cities are one of the major contributors of climate change. The built environment urgently needs to significantly reduce its impact on resource depletion and its CO2 emissions. At the same time, urban environments must adapt to guarantee livability and safety in increasingly frequent severe conditions. To aid this process, assessment methods and indexes have been developed to help designers and researchers investigate optimal solutions for outdoor thermal comfort. Temperature increase during summer is a growing concern also in northern European cities such as Tallinn, Estonia. This paper presents a study on the comfort conditions of the outdoor areas of the TalTech campus in Tallinn during summer and investigates the cooling potential of vegetated surfaces and trees in the local microclimate. A parametric design workflow was developed that integrates building and climate modeling, environmental and building simulations and outdoor comfort assessment through the metrics of Universal Thermal Climate Index and Outdoor Thermal Comfort Autonomy. The results show that heat stress can be experienced on the outdoor areas of the campus. The quantity and the optimal location of vegetated surfaces and trees to provide comfort were determined through the developed algorithm. The methods and the generated vegetation patterns are presented and discussed.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the ZEBE grant 2014–2020.4.01.15–0016 funded by the European Regional Development Fund and by the H2020 grant Finest Twins 856602 funded by the European Commission.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Tallinn University of Technology, Ehitajate tee 5, 19086, Tallinn, Estonia

    Francesco De Luca

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  1. Francesco De Luca
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Correspondence to Francesco De Luca .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    David Gerber

  2. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Evangelos Pantazis

  3. Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

    Biayna Bogosian

  4. University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada

    Alicia Nahmad

  5. Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

    Constantinos Miltiadis

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De Luca, F. (2022). Outdoor Comfort Analysis in a University Campus During the Warm Season and Parametric Design of Mitigation Strategies for Resilient Urban Environments. In: Gerber, D., Pantazis, E., Bogosian, B., Nahmad, A., Miltiadis, C. (eds) Computer-Aided Architectural Design. Design Imperatives: The Future is Now. CAAD Futures 2021. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1465. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1280-1_29

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1280-1_29

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