Effect of Landscape Microclimates on Thermal Comfort and Physiological Wellbeing

Application of DIY Electrodermal Activity Wristband in Detecting Stress and Affective Responses of Students

This paper describes the analysis of electrodermal activity (EDA) in the context of students' scholastic activity. Taking a multidisciplinary, citizen science and maker-centric approach, low-cost, bespoken wearables, such as a mini weather station and biometric wristband, were built. To investigate both physical health as well as stress, the instruments were first validated against research grade devices. Following this, a research experiment was created and conducted in the context of students' scholastic activity. Data from this experiment were used to train machine learning models, which were then applied to interpret the relationships between the environment, health, and stress. It is hoped that analyses of EDA data will further strengthen the emerging model describing the intersections between local microclimate and physiological and neurological stress. The results suggest that temperature and air quality play an important role in students' physiological well-being, thus demonstrating the feasibility of understanding the extent of the effects of various microclimatic factors. This highlights the importance of thermal comfort and air ventilation in real-life applications to improve students' well-being. We envision our work making a significant impact by showcasing the effectiveness and feasibility of inexpensive, self-designed wearable devices for tracking microclimate and electrodermal activity (EDA). The affordability of these wearables holds promising implications for scalability and encourages crowd-sourced citizen science in the relatively unexplored domain of microclimate's influence on well-being. Embracing citizen science can then democratize learning and expedite rapid research advancements.

Exploring the Predictive Potential of Physiological Measures of Human Thermal Strain in Outdoor Environments in Hot and Humid Areas in Summer-A Case Study of Shanghai, China

Whenever people spend time outdoors during hot weather, they are putting themselves in potentially stressful situations. Being able to predict whether a person is overheating can be critical in preventing heat-health issues. There is a clear relationship between body core temperature and heat health. However, measuring body core temperature is expensive. Identifying a non-invasive measure that could indicate a person's thermal strain would be valuable. This study investigated five physiological measures as possible surrogates: finger mean skin temperature (FSKT), finger maximum skin temperature (FMSKT), skin conductance level (SCL), heart rate (HR), and heart rate variability (HRV). Furthermore, they were compared against the results of participants' subjective thermal sensation and thermal comfort in a range of hot microclimatic conditions in a hot and humid climate. Results showed that except for SCL, each of the other four physiological measures had a positive significant relationship with thermal sensation, but a negative relationship with thermal comfort. Furthermore, through testing by cumulative link mixed models, HRV was found to be the most suitable surrogate for predicting thermal sensation and thermal comfort through a simple, non-invasive measure in outdoor environment in summer in a hot and humid area. This study highlights the method for predicting human thermal strain and contributes to improve the public health and well-being of urban dwellers in outdoor environments.

Improvement Strategies for Microclimate and Thermal Comfort for Urban Squares: A Case of a Cold Climate Area in China

Urban squares are an important part of a city’s overall spatial environment. However, many urban squares lack rational designs, causing the thermal environment to deteriorate. To ensure sustainable urban development, urban square microclimates should be improved. Given that, this study investigates the effects of three coverages of three landscape elements of urban squares through modeling and simulation using the ENVI-met model validated by field measurements. The correlation between physiological equivalent temperature (PET) and different amounts of landscape elements is investigated using Spearman analysis. This study presents a case study of a typical urban square in a cold climate area. Design strategies in the area are proposed. The results show that the microclimate and thermal comfort of the urban square can be improved by expanding water bodies, modest increasing buildings and optimizing vegetation. Vegetation is the most important landscape element affecting thermal comfort in the urban square. The PET can be reduced by about 1.5 °C by increasing the vegetation cover from 40% to 70%. However, the degree of microclimate regulation by vegetation is disturbed by water bodies and buildings (|ρ| ≥ 0.5). Therefore, to achieve a more comfortable thermal environment, a combination of landscape elements should be considered.

Study of the Effects of Ten-Year Microclimate Regulation Based on Different Vegetation Type Combinations in a City Riparian Zone

Ecological engineering construction is the main method for urban riparian landscape restoration. Continuous ecological environmental monitoring can reflect the effects of engineering construction and can provide a scientific basis for the improvement of engineering technology. However, the evaluation of riparian ecological engineering mainly focuses on the water environmental function and biodiversity conservation function after the construction period. Studies on the long-term evaluation of regional microclimate regulation and human settlement improvement are limited. In this paper, an ecological restoration project along the Yitong River in northern China was selected as the research object. Temperature, relative humidity and wind speed under different vegetation type combinations were monitored in the riparian ecological engineering construction during the first, second, third and tenth years. The temperature–humidity index (THI) was selected to evaluate human comfort and the improvement effect of microclimate was assessed for different vegetation type combinations. The results showed that vegetation type combinations can play a good role in regulating the microclimate and human comfort. The riparian ecological restoration project achieved a stable function for microclimate regulation in the third year. There was no significant regulation difference between tree–shrub–herb and tree–herb combinations. To realize the optimization of ecological benefits, economic benefits and social benefits, the tree–herb combination can be appropriately increased, and the tree–shrub–herb can be reduced in the application of ecological engineering. Microclimate regulation is an important achievement in engineering construction effects and can be regarded as one of the indices to evaluate the effect of ecological restoration.

Effects of Low-Carbon Visualizations in Landscape Design Based on Virtual Eye-Movement Behavior Preference

Three-dimensional geovisualization in landscape design can be used to evaluate the efforts of mitigating CO2 emissions. This study evaluated subjects’ emotional preferences for 3D landscape design through an eye movement tracking experiment. In the case that the color of the building materials was positively correlated with low carbon emissions, green, blue, and gray were typical representatives of low carbon emissions. Through the eye movement tracking experiment, subjects’ emotional preferences for different building colors were obtained. The results show that the fixation trajectory is consistent with the preset green and energy saving parameters, and the design effect of the architectural landscape can be evaluated by detecting virtual eye movement tracking. There is a coupling relationship between virtual eye movement tracking, expert interviews, and evaluation results, so that it presents a logical relationship between virtual eye movement, the color of low-carbon materials, and carbon emissions. In addition, the affective preference analysis and entropy weight method confirmed their effectiveness in the evaluation of the 3D landscape design effect, which had a positive impact on the CO2 emission reduction of the construction industry. These results will contribute to the development of 3D landscape design in the architecture industry and provide new ideas and methods for the carbon peak project.

Integrated Evaluation Method of the Health-Related Physical Environment in Urbanizing Areas: A Case Study From a University Campus in China

Environmental deterioration in urbanizing areas increases the risks of sudden death as well as chronic, infectious, and psychological diseases. Quantifying health-related physical environment can assess the health risk of urban residents. This study uses an integrated evaluation method to simulate the health-related physical environment in the four dimensions of acoustic, wind, thermal, and landscape. According to the case study of one university campus in an urbanizing area in China, results show that (1) areas with unqualified equivalent A sound levels are generally the sports area, green square 1 and laboratory areas, and residents who stay in these areas for a long time suffer the risks of hearing loss and mental stress. (2) The windless area ratio of teaching area 1 and dormitory area 4 is larger than 20%, and respiratory health risks increase because these areas relate to relatively wind discomfort. (3) The high-temperature zone ratio of sports area and green square 2 is larger than 50%, and heatstroke risks increase since these areas relate with low thermal comfort. (4) The overall landscape perception level of dormitories and dining areas is lower than that of the teaching area, and it can cause anxiety and irritability. (5) The sports area has the lowest average overall score of the health-related physical environment among all functional areas, followed by laboratory areas. These findings indicate that the proposed model and method can be valuable tools for the pre-evaluation and optimization of urban planning. It can reduce the health risks of residents in urbanizing areas and can benefit residents' health and urban sustainable development.

Investigation on Airport Landscape Cooling Associated with Irrigation: A Case Study of Adelaide Airport, Australia

Extreme summertime heat is becoming a major issue for aircraft operations. As global temperatures continue to rise, some of the heaviest planes on the longest flights may eventually be unable to depart during the hottest part of summer days. During summer days, some airports have to reduce the payload of aircraft, including cargo and/or passengers in the hotter days of summer. Nonetheless, there is no existing body of research on the potential for airport cooling. Furthermore, extreme heat on the ground also affects airport workers; loading and unloading luggage and servicing platforms between flights could become more arduous. With global warming proceeding, it is becoming increasingly urgent to find a suitable strategy to cool airport environments, perhaps by irrigation of a vegetated landscape. All airports have large enclosed areas (usually of grass) acting as a buffer between airport activities and the adjacent industrial, commercial and residential land utilization. This paper describes the trial of irrigating the buffer area of Adelaide airport and analyzes the performance of irrigation cooling for Adelaide airport, examining whether this can benefit human thermal comfort. Results indicate that irrigation provides cooling, and the cooling effect reduces along with the increasing instance from the middle of the irrigation area. At 15:00, the average air temperature was 1.8 °C cooler in the middle of the irrigation area than in the non-irrigation area, and the relative humidity was 5.8% higher during the trial period. On an extremely hot day (the maximum air temperature was 45.4 °C), it was 1.5 °C cooler in the middle of the irrigation area than upwind the of irrigation area, and 0.8 °C cooler than downwind of the irrigation area at 13:00. Human thermal comfort (HTC) is unfavorable in the runway, but greater improvements can be made through promotion of irrigation.

Perceived Quality of Urban Wetland Parks: A Second-Order Factor Structure Equation Modeling

Wetland in the urban or peri-urban areas has been recognized as an important component of urban ecosystems and provides ecological and environmental services. Wetland park emerged as a kind of restoration of natural wetlands in the context of increasing pressure on land and eco-environment caused by urban sprawl, which has played an essential role in providing recreational spaces/opportunities and improving social interactions. However, little research has been conducted on the theoretical formulation elaborating individuals’ perceived quality of wetland parks when people are engaging in activities therein. This study is an attempt to develop a method to measure the quality of wetland parks based on individuals’ various perceptions and attitudes. From the view of human-nature interaction, the perceived quality is hypothetically conceptualized as a composite of two dimensions, such as comfort perception and environmental satisfaction. A series of questionnaire-based surveys were conducted among respondents (N = 936) in Yanghu wetland park in Changsha, China. Based on the measured items from on-site surveys, second-order factor structural equation modeling is applied to estimate the hypothesis of a hierarchical structure for elaborating how the quality of wetland park is perceived by individual respondents. The results test the hypothesis that the quality of wetland park as a second-order theoretical construct can be conceptualized by two first-order theoretical constructs, individuals’ comfort (loading = 0.749), and environmental satisfaction (loading = 0.828). In addition, a significant influence of attitudes toward green space on the perceived quality of wetland park has been identified.