Use of Thermal Walks to Assess Pedestrian Thermal Comfort on a Humid Subtropical University Campus

Many college campuses, often designed to be walkable spaces with outdoor seating and recreational areas, exhibit diverse landscape design elements that can create microclimates not accurately recorded at nearby weather stations. Consequently, students may experience varying thermal comfort levels as they encounter changes in land cover and infrastructure throughout campus. Thermal walks can be used to investigate these variations and the influence of landscape design on the thermal comfort of pedestrians walking through campus. However, because the majority of these thermal walks have been conducted in desert or continental climates, it remains unclear whether their findings can apply to more humid environments like the Southeastern U.S. To address this uncertainty, we conducted thermal walks across the Mississippi State University (MSU) campus in April 2022. During these walks, we used wearable sensors (iButton) and GPS devices to assess the local variability of thermal comfort, based on air temperature and heat index, along common walking routes on campus. Observations were then compared to those obtained from an automated weather station located on MSU's North Farm. Our results reveal notable disparities between the local measurements of thermal comfort on campus and those observed at the nearby weather station. These findings have implications for short-term forecasting of thermal comfort and extreme heat warnings, as well as for long-term planning and design of outdoor spaces to improve thermal comfort for students on humid college campuses.