Advanced Thermal Comfort Assessment

Project duration: July 2024 – June 2025

Darwin’s tropical climate and rising temperatures make heat stress a critical challenge. Shade and wind play vital roles in enhancing human thermal comfort, yet current measures rely heavily on basic metrics like air temperature and humidity. This project explores advanced methods to improve our understanding of outdoor thermal comfort and mitigate the risks of heat stress for the community.

How are we helping you to improve thermal comfort?

We are applying state-of-the-art heat balance models, such as the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI), to Darwin’s climate data. By combining wind speed and directions, and solar radiation, we are developing graphic tools like the wind rose to visualize how wind and radiation affect comfort throughout the year. The wind rose graphic tool aims to support better planning for buildings, landscapes, and urban design, ultimately improving thermal comfort for Darwin residents.

Universal Thermal Comfort Index

How does the wind rose graphic tool work?

The wind rose graphic tool uses meteorological data, including wind speed, direction, air temperature, humidity, and solar radiation, to simulate human thermal comfort levels. Through Mean Radiant Temperature (MRT) and UTCI simulations, the tool identifies hours of discomfort throughout the year and evaluates the impact of shading and wind resources on enhancing thermal comfort. This methodology empowers communities and practitioners with actionable insights for heat adaptation.

What’s next?

Our findings will be shared with planners, developers, and the community to guide design decisions and improve heat resilience. The project will also result in a peer-reviewed journal article, positioning Darwin as a leader in heat mitigation research. Future work may extend to spatially distributed heat maps using meteorological data, paving the way for data-driven urban cooling strategies.

Further Information

An innovative bioclimatic Windrose tool was developed by Sadeghi et al., (2018) for Greater Metropolitan Sydney. This project follows the same methodology.
Project team: Dr Mahsan Sadeghi (Project lead), Dr Tim Muster (Project manager), Stephen Cook (data analysis, and visualisation), Yong Bing Khoo (Programmer), Chi-Hsiang Wang (Visualisation)