Thermal comfort and urban environment: preliminary assessment in Paulo VI Housing, Belo Horizonte, MG

Abstract

Informal, densely built urban areas in the city of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil, tend to be hotter than the formal city and may present thermal discomfort conditions throughout the year. Considering the scarcity of studies in these areas, the case of Paulo VI Housing, located in Belo Horizonte, is presented, with the objective of evaluating thermal comfort conditions during the hottest time of a winter day. Microclimatic data were collected at 25 points in the area and inserted as input data into the software Rayman PRO, which was configured with the characteristics of the surroundings of each point and of the acclimatized population, in order to calculate the thermal comfort index Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET). The results show that the conditions of thermal discomfort in this area are mainly related to solar incidence in urban areas, and that the construction characteristics of the area may contribute to high surface and average radiant temperatures. Considering that the mean radiant temperature is a microclimatic variable that greatly influences the PET calculation, on sunny days with low wind speeds, measures that enable its reduction can help in the design of environments with more suitable thermal conditions, reducing thermal discomfort in the study area. This suggests that the shading of public areas may be one of the main local strategies to increase the resilience of the urban environment in contexts of warming trends and thermal discomfort.