Assessment and synergy analysis of outdoor thermal comfort and thermal infrared remote sensing for urban heat island studies

Abstract

The aim of this research is to explore the potentialities and limits of the integration of remote sensing biophysical data (land surface temperature) in the outdoor thermal comfort studies. Accordingly, by examining correlations between land surface temperature and air temperature, and using respectively remote sensing satellite data MODIS and different weather stations archives alongside questionnaire surveys. Currently, the parameters of thermal comfort indices are usually calculated using the data from one, or few permanent or portable ground-based weather stations. Due to the lack of adequate distribution of weather stations, those calculations generally do not accurately represent the alteration of thermal comfort, through time and space. Nevertheless, it has been essentially proved that despite strong tendencies between in-situ measured parameters and remotely sensed ones, various elements need to be studied (e.g., location, land surface type, vegetation, and elevation). Finally, preliminary results confirm that the proposed linear approaches are providing considerable and promising performance suitable for future specific situations and studies purposes.