Thermal environment of urban schoolyards: Current and future design with respect to children’s thermal comfort
Date
2020Language
en
Keyword
Abstract
Urban outdoor thermal conditions, and its impacts on the health and well‐being for the city inhabitants have reached increased attention among biometeorological studies during the last two decades. Children are considered more sensitive and vulnerable to hot ambient conditions compared to adults, and are affected strongly by their thermal environment. One of the urban outdoor environments that children spend almost one third of their school time is the schoolyard. The aims of the present manuscript were to review studies conducted worldwide, in order to present the biophysical characteristics of the typical design of the urban schoolyard. This was done to assess, in terms of bioclimatology, the interactions between the thermal environment and the children’s body, to discuss the adverse effects of thermal environment on children, especially the case of heat stress, and to propose measures that could be applied to improve the thermal environment of schoolyards, focusing on vegetation. Human thermal comfort monitoring tools are mainly developed for adults, thus, further research is needed to adapt them to children. The schemes that are usually followed to design urban schoolyards create conditions that favour the exposure of children to excessive heat, inducing high health risks to them. The literature survey showed that typical urban schoolyard design (i.e., dense surface materials, absence of trees) triggered high surface temperatures (that may exceed 58 °C) and increased absorption of radiative heat load (that may exceed 64 °C in terms of Mean Radiant Temperature) during a clear day with intense solar radiation. Furthermore, vegetation cover has a positive impact on schoolyard’s microclimate, by improving thermal comfort and reducing heat stress perception of children. Design options for urban schoolyards and strategies that can mitigate the adverse effects of heat stress are proposed with focus on vegetation cover that affect positively their thermal environment and improve their aesthetic and functionality. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Applications of earth-to-air heat exchangers: A holistic review
Mihalakakou G., Souliotis M., Papadaki M., Halkos G., Paravantis J., Makridis S., Papaefthimiou S. (2022)The building sector is responsible for 40% of primary energy consumption, with heating/cooling covering the most significant portion. Thus, passive heating/cooling applications have gained significant ground during the ... -
Comparison of the EN 15251 and Ashrae Standard 55 adaptive thermal comfort models in the context of a Mediterranean climate
Roetzel, A.; Tsangrassoulis, A.; Drakou, A.; De Siqueira, G. (2011)Strong heat waves in the past decade and resulting legal cases which gave full responsibility for indoor thermal comfort to building professionals lead to an increased uncertainty how to maintain thermal comfort in offices ... -
A Hybrid Bimodal LSTM Architecture for Cascading Thermal Energy Storage Modelling
Anagnostis A., Moustakidis S., Papageorgiou E., Bochtis D. (2022)Modelling of thermal energy storage (TES) systems is a complex process that requires the development of sophisticated computational tools for numerical simulation and optimization. Until recently, most modelling approaches ...