531: Outdoor comfort in open spaces: proposal for a quick evaluation method

In order to enhance quality of life in cities, comfort should be considered as an important issue when designing open spaces. Until now, only few methods addressing this issue about how people “feel” open spaces are available to architects and urban-planners, however. Thus, this study aims at developing and testing a “quick assessment” tool regarding thermal, visual and acoustic comfort in open spaces. This method is based on results we previously obtained in the context of the EU-RUROS project (http://alpha.cres.gr/ruros). In addition to using empirical relations linking physical parameters (e.g. air temperature, wind speed, mean radiant temperature, physiological equivalent temperature) and recorded sensation votes, the method also employs the TOWNSCOPE modelling tool. “Educated guesses” are also used to simplify the analysis of certain parameters like the wind field at pedestrian level that is particularly difficult to evaluate without complex CFC approach. For testing purposes, a newly built open space located on a university campus in Fribourg Switzerland, has been chosen as a case study site. This paper aims at showing that combining onsite meteorological measurements with results from simple modelling tools as well as with “educated guesses”, the method can help both in characterising actual comfort conditions and in providing advices for potential comfort improvements.