Effects of microclimate and human parameters on outdoor thermal sensation in the high-density tropical context of Dhaka.

A thermal comfort questionnaire survey was carried out in the high-density, tropical city Dhaka. Comfort responses from over 1300 subjects were collected at six different sites, alongside meteorological parameters. The effect of personal and psychological parameters was examined in order to develop predictive models. Personal parameters included gender, age, activity, profession-type (indoor or outdoor-based), exposure to air-conditioned space and sweat-levels. Psychological parameters, such as 'the reason for visiting the place' and 'next destination is air-conditioned', had statistically significant effects on thermal sensation. Other parameters, such as 'body type', 'body exposure to sun', 'time living in Dhaka', 'travelling in last_30 min', and 'hot food' did not have any significant impact. Respondents' humidity, wind speed and solar radiation sensation had profound impacts and people were found willing to adjust to the thermal situations with adaptive behaviour. Based on actual sensation votes from the survey, empirical models are developed to predict outdoor thermal sensation in the case study areas. Ordinal linear regression techniques are applied for predicting thermal sensation by considering meteorological and personal conditions of the field survey. The inclusion of personal and weather opinion factors produced an improvement in models based on meteorological factors. The models were compared with the actual thermal sensation using the cross-tabulation technique. The predictivity of the three models (meteorological, thermos-physiological and combined parameter) as expressed by the gamma coefficient were 0.575, 0.636 and 0.727, respectively. In all three models, better predictability was observed in the 'Slightly Warm' (71% in meteorological model) and 'Hot' (64.9% in combined parameter model) categories-the most important ones in a hot-humid climate.

Improving the soundscape quality of urban areas exposed to aircraft noise by adding moving water and vegetation.

Research shows that the sight of trees and the sound of moving water improve the soundscape quality of outdoor spaces exposed to road traffic noise. Effects are attributed to non-energetic masking, visual attentional distortion, and congruence between sight and hearing. However, there is no literature on such effects for aircraft noise. Aircraft noise varies from other traffic sources, i.e., in terms temporal variability, duration, and spectral composition, complicating the application of findings without further research. In a virtual reality experiment reported in this article, participants were asked to rate scenarios with different sound levels of flyovers, urban typologies, vegetation, and/ or water features. The results showed a significant improvement of the soundscape quality when (1) vegetation and (2) moving water were present, and especially when (3) vegetation and moving water were presented simultaneously, especially for residential areas in terms of the relative change. Moving water also reduced the saliency of aircraft flyovers significantly, changing the constellation of fore- and background sounds. Moving water raised the perceived audibility of the most dominant sound source too, which could be attributed to non-energetic masking effects. The findings of this study indicate that soundscape strategies can complement noise abatement in areas prone to aircraft noise.

The role of strategic visibility in shaping wayfinding behavior in multilevel buildings.

In this paper, we explore the mutual effect of prior background expectations and visibility afforded by the 3D configuration of the physical environment on wayfinding efficiency and strategy in multilevel buildings. We perform new analyses on data from 149 participants who performed six unaided and directed wayfinding tasks in virtual buildings with varying degrees of visibility. Our findings reveal that the interaction between visibility and prior background expectations significantly affects wayfinding efficiency and strategy during between-floor wayfinding tasks. We termed this interaction effect strategic visibility, which emphasizes the importance of the strategic allocation of visibility towards actionable building elements in promoting efficient wayfinding and shaping wayfinding strategy. Our study highlights the significance of strategic visibility in promoting inclusive and accessible built environments for neurodiversity. Finally, we provide an open-source dataset that can be used to develop and test new wayfinding theories and models to advance research in the emerging field of human-building interaction.