Evaluating and Enhancing Performance, Performance in Moderately Warm-wet Climate Zone

Abstract

Climate change is expected to bring rising temperatures and to increase the frequency and severity of extreme heat events in Central-Europe, and thus in Hungary. Combined with the peculiar climate of cities characterized by increased temperature and reduced ventilation in the summertime. Furthermore, heat waves are expected to have greater impact on urban environment. Nonetheless,The main target of this research is investigating the possibility of enhancing the outdoor thermal comfort in central European city of Pecs. In simple words is to determine how designers could modify climatic conditions in urban spaces for thermal comfort and develop a better understanding of the relationship between outdoor thermal comfort, urban design, and microclimate in an attempt to improve the pedestrians‘ thermal perception. A representative study area was chosen for the research. The outdoor thermal performance in the study area was quantitatively and qualitatively evaluated through conducting a field questionnaire and numerical assessment respectively. In this evaluation study (computational fluid dynamics) software “ENvi-met” was used and a sample of occupants were interviewed. This study identified many issues associated with outdoor thermal and indicated its poor performance within the study area. A number of outdoor thermal design measures were formulated based on the literature review and considering the evaluation study results along with the research context nature. The proposed outdoor thermal design measures were applied to the selected study space and their effectiveness in terms of enhancing the outdoor thermal performance was quantified via “Envi-met”.Furthermore, the numerical results reported that the proposed outdoor thermal design measures could significantly enhance outdoor thermal performance. However, it can be concluded that the final design of the study public space can alleviate the heat stress on outdoor spaces and reach the research main main and objectives. keywords: Evaluating, Enhancement, Outdoor thermal comfort, Moderately warm-wet climate zone, Envi-met software