Traditional and novel approaches to studying the human thermal environment in urban areas: A critical review of the current state of the art

Abstract

Traditional approaches to researching the urban thermal environment focus on identifying the specific manifestations of the local climate and microclimate within urban structures and various types of urban development, and on detecting urban heat islands using meteorological station data, mobile measurements, remote sensing, and (micro)climatic modelling. Nonetheless, current manifestations of climate change and its projections into the future bring the need for the effective climatic adaptation of urban environments. Current research focuses on approaches allowing for a more complex assessment of both the thermal and overall environment of people in towns and cities. This requires numerical modelling in high spatial resolution and large questionnaire surveys. Despite many unanswered theoretical and methodological questions, the approaches to and knowledge of the human urban thermal environment demonstrate growing application potential.