Climate, Urban Configuration and Thermal Comfort in Outdoor Spaces. The case of Mendoza’s City, Argentina

ERICA CORREA; CARLOS DE ROSA; GRACIELA LESINO

Santiago de Chile

Conferencia; VI International Conference on Sustainable Energy Technologies, SET 2007.; 2007

Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Estudios Urbanos de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, en colaboración con la Universidad de Nottingham, la Universidad de Bio-Bio, la Universidad de Viña del Mar y la Universidad del Desarrollo.

This paper attempts to evaluate the thermal behaviour of different configurations of urban spaces that are present in Mendoza’s city, with the aim of obtaining a set of guidelines for designing more sustainable environments. To this objective; a set of meteorological data was recorded from sixteen fixed stations located inside the city, over a complete yearly cycle. The sites studied represent different land-use types and its human bioclimatic conditions were evaluated using The Discomfort Index (DI) proposed by Thom, as an indicator suitable for the type of data obtained The mean daily and hourly variations of the DI are given, and its distribution is cartographically presented and analysed. The final goal is to correlate the observed differences in the level of the thermal comfort between the evaluated stations and the differences in the dynamics of urbanization in their environment.   Key words: thermal comfort, outdoors spaces, urban climate, urban sustainability.