ID: 47
Presenting Author: Ara Kim
Status: pending
This develops a heart-rate-based index for assessing pedestrian thermal comfort, promoting human-centered approaches to urban heat adaptation and evidence-based design of climate-resilient cities.
Urban heat increasingly threatens human health and well-being, yet conventional comfort indices focus on physical parameters rather than physiological responses. This study introduces a Physiological Thermal Comfort Index (PTCI), developed using wearable heart rate sensors to quantify pedestrians’ physiological strain under outdoor heat exposure. Field experiments were conducted along four pedestrian street types in Suwon, South Korea, representing different configurations of buildings and street trees. The PTCI was defined by the per-minute rate of heart rate increase, applying a 10 bpm threshold to indicate cardiovascular strain risk. Results showed that PTCI clearly distinguished heat stress levels across street morphologies. Streets with higher tree canopy coverage and moderate height-to-width ratios recorded significantly lower PTCI values, reflecting reduced physiological burden. Moreover, PTCI exhibited stronger correspondence with subjective comfort than meteorological indices such as UTCI. The findings highlight the value of integrating physiological indicators into urban heat adaptation assessments. PTCI provides a practical, evidence-based approach for identifying heat-vulnerable pedestrian spaces and evaluating the effectiveness of shading and greening strategies. This framework promotes human-centered, data-driven design of climate-resilient cities.
Ara Kim is an invited researcher at the Korea Environment Institute (KEI), specializing in climate change adaptation policy and quantitative impact assessment.