Friday, 18 August 2000: 11:15 AM
Several environmental factors take part in the formation of the urban microclimate. Their intervention is spread out on varied urban scales. In the urban public space scale, the urban form and the space morphology constitute significant components of the built environment.
On the basis of the hypothesis that the space configuration variations in public urban outspace make significant climatic modifications, and influence the physiological comfort of the individuals, we have undertaken a study of the crossing of the morphological characteristics and the climatic parameters of comfort, by the validation of a system of morphological indicators. The aim of this work was to determine the degree of the influence of each morphological characteristic represented by an urban indicator on the modification of the thermal comfort climatic parameters.
However these indicators were usable on a rather vast urban ray, and their crossing with climatic parameters has given a few correlations. These results revealed that a search of finer morphological characteristics of urban space was necessary.
Moreover, in this search orientation, we still remain considering the morphological characteristics collected on an urban micro scale from stereographic view processing. Then our approach takes into account simultaneously:
1- typo morphological data, which we translate into indicators characterizing the urban forms in urban public outspaces. These indicators will be calculated from fish-eye photographs,
2- climatic data which inform about the microclimatic situation of the spaces. These data are collected from series of measurements on the ground.
Establishing a correspondence between these data will be achieved by a search of correlation to treat the influence of the urban forms on the climatic parameters of comfort. It will lead us to make an attempt of validation of the morphological indicators applied in public urban outspace scale.
This work takes part in a general background which aims at defining methods and assisting tools for urban design and better management of climatic environment, and leads to a methodological approach allowing a simple interpretation that is expressed by valid physical indicators correlated with urban form and outdoor climate.
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