Evaluation of Sustainable Strategies and Design Solutions at High-Latitude Urban Settlements to Enhance Outdoor Thermal Comfort

Abstract

Driven by the necessity to design resilient and prosperous cities and to counteract the impacts of climate change, this study aims to shed light on the interactions between microclimate, urban built environment, and the outdoor thermal comfort (OTC) conditions at a university campus in Trondheim, Norway. This paper calls into question up to which degree four typical microclimatic design solutions can enhance OTC in high-latitude areas which are generally characterized by strong seasonal variability in meteorological conditions, particularly in solar radiation. An on-site measurement campaign in autumn 2019 for the validation of numerical simulations with ENVI-met were carried out. Solar access proved to be the key parameter to improve OTC by a Predicted Mean Vote of up to 1.0 in the investigated climatic situation. Moreover, wind sheltering resulted in an increase of OTC, although not as pronounced and on a smaller spatial scale. Changing the buildings’ surface material resulted in no significant changes in microclimatic conditionsAt a higher wind speed (8 m/s), wind sheltering becomes more effective in improving OTC than solar access. This study underlines the importance of microclimatic assessments in order to understand the effect of different interventions with the urban environment on OTC at high‐latitude urban settlements.