Assessment of sheltered walkways in tropics: understanding contextual influence and user perception of outdoor thermal comfort

This paper presents a hybrid approach for assessing thermal comfort in outdoor spaces within humid tropical climates, with a specific focus on the evaluation of pedestrian-covered walkways during their early design stages. Our methodology combines experimental data collection and numerical simulations to analyze the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI). We conduct experiments to generate micro-climate variables at 15 diverse site locations in Singapore. A distinctive feature of our framework is its ability to achieve accurate UTCI values without the need for wind simulations, thereby avoiding the use of computational fluid dynamics software tools and enhancing scalability. We compare results for three distinct one-hour periods of the day (morning, afternoon, and evening) and conduct an in-depth analysis of thermal comfort within sheltered environments. Additionally, to gain a deeper understanding of the micro-climate conditions at the examined sites, we incorporate subjective responses from pedestrians. Graphical abstract