Shenzhen City in China is developing rapidly now. Correspondingly, deterioration of the outdoor environment in phenomena such as heat island has become a serious problem. This aggravation of the thermal environment has spoiled urban sustainability. In this paper, (1) in order to predict the outdoors thermal environment in summer in an apartment block, unsteady coupled simulation of convection, radiation, and conduction is developed and used. The velocity, temperature, humidity, and MRT in the urban area are obtained from the simulation. In order to estimate the pedestrian level of thermal comfort in the outdoor thermal environment, the spatial distributions of New Standard Effective Temperature (SET*) is calculated using the above results. (2) The actual situation of the outdoors thermal environment in summer in an apartment block in Shenzhen City is investigated by field measurements. (3) The effect of schemes to improve the outdoor thermal environment in this apartment block, such as changing building shapes, planting arrangements, etc. are examined using this prediction method. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
