Benefits and opportunities of adopting GIS in thermal comfort studies in resting places: An urban park as an example

The aim of the present paper is to recommend a methodology for the thermal comfort investigations of resting places (parks and squares) in urban environments. During three periods (three times 14 weekdays in transient seasons) 6775 visitors were mapped in half-hour intervals between 12 and 3 p.m. on a park in the inner city of Szeged (South-East Hungary). Besides marking the subjects' exact locations, some of their personal features were also noticed in table format. Physiologically equivalent temperature (degrees C) was calculated from the meteorological data measured by the site, to describe the thermal conditions of the measurement intervals. To reveal patterns of area usage according to thermal conditions, the observations data were digitized and processed within GIS application ArcView. The created area usage maps clearly illustrate the temporarily differences of attendance (on seasonally and daily basis too). These maps facilitate detection of preferred and ignored sub-areas in the function of thermal conditions (or any of the recorded subjective or measured objective parameters). The usefulness of these maps in practice, as well as the extension-possibilities of the presented methodology are also discussed. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.