An Investigation of Outdoor Thermal Comfort Assessment for Elderly Individuals in a Field Study in Northeastern China

Abstract

The harsh climate and the aging of urban populations have negatively impacted the quality of life of the elderly in severely cold regions. As a result, there is an urgent need to improve environment quality and accurately evaluate outdoor thermal comfort. However, existing studies have paid little attention to older adults living in severely cold climates. This paper aims to fill this gap by studying the elderly population in severely cold cities with high aging rates in China. By combining on-site testing, questionnaire surveys, CFD modeling, parametric computing, and statistical analysis, the study presents an adapted UTCI for elderly people, as well as multi-seasonal prediction models. The results (1) show that the neutral ranges of the UTCI are significantly affected by both climate zones and age groups. Older people are more tolerant to heat but more sensitive to cold. (2) The results also reveal the importance of factors such as air temperature, wind speed, solar radiation temperature, wind direction, relative humidity, and cloud cover in evaluating outdoor thermal comfort. (3) Multi-seasonal thermal comfort models based on neural networks were developed, and empirical studies verified that the model had the highest accuracy in the transitional season and the lowest accuracy in the winter season.