Crowdsourced data as a strategic approach to include the human dimension in outdoor environmental quality assessments.

Outdoor environments extend living spaces as venues for various activities. Comfortable open public spaces can positively impact citizens' health and well-being, thereby improving the livability and resilience of cities. Considering the visitors' perception of these environments in comfort studies is crucial for ensuring their well-being and promoting the use of these spaces.

On urban microclimate spatial-temporal dynamics: Evidence from the integration of fixed and wearable sensing and mapping techniques.

Urban Heat Island (UHI) is acknowledged to generate harmful consequences on human health, and it is one of the main anthropogenic challenges to face in modern cities. Due to the urban dynamic complexity, a full microclimate decoding is required to design tailored mitigation strategies for reducing heat-related vulnerability. This study proposes a new method to assess intra-urban microclimate variability by combining for the first time two dedicated monitoring systems consisting of fixed and mobile techniques.

Tailoring High-Entropy Oxides as Emerging Radiative Materials for Daytime Passive Cooling.

In the framework of intense research about high-entropy materials and their applications in energy-oriented technologies, in the present work, we discuss the potential applicability of selected oxides and of the alloys they form at different concentrations for daytime radiative cooling implementation. In particular, by combining density functional theory and the finite difference method, we provide an unbiased, scattering-free description of structural, electronic, and dynamic features of the best candidates, showing the required strong radiative properties for passive cooling while offering the benefits of affordability and compatibility with commercial coating fabrication processes.

Tactical urban pocket parks (TUPPs) for subjective and objective multi-domain comfort enhancement.

Cities face growing anthropogenic overheating phenomena, such as Urban Heat Island Effect and more intense and frequent heatwaves, impacting livability and wellbeing of local citizens and tourists. To mitigate such effects, passive mitigation strategies have been widely studied in the past decades, to be integrated within the built environment. The insertion of green areas, i.

Daytime Radiative Cooling: A Perspective toward Urban Heat Island Mitigation.

Traditional cooling and heating systems in residential buildings account for more than 15% of global electricity consumption and 10% of global emissions of greenhouse gases. Daytime radiative cooling (DRC) is an emerging passive cooling technology that has garnered significant interest in recent years due to its high cooling capability. It is expected to play a pivotal role in improving indoor and outdoor urban environments by mitigating surface and air temperatures while decreasing relevant energy demand.

Effect of time-of-day on human dynamic thermal perception.

Implementing heating and cooling set-point temperature modulations in buildings can promote energy savings and boost energy flexibility. However, time and time-of-day requirements in current indoor climate regulations are either overly simplified or ignored completely. A better understanding of how human thermal responses vary throughout the day is useful to effectively design and operate energy-flexible buildings.

Long-Term Thermal Comfort Monitoring via Wearable Sensing Techniques: Correlation between Environmental Metrics and Subjective Perception.

The improvement of comfort monitoring resources is pivotal for a better understanding of personal perception in indoor and outdoor environments and thus developing personalized comfort models maximizing occupants' well-being while minimizing energy consumption. Different daily routines and their relation to the thermal sensation remain a challenge in long-term monitoring campaigns. This paper presents a new methodology to investigate the correlation between individuals' daily Thermal Sensation Vote (TSV) and environmental exposure.

Management of disposable surgical masks for tackling pandemic-generated pollution: Thermo-acoustic investigations and life cycle assessment of novel recycled building panels.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed people's habits, causing them to use large amounts of disposable items and exacerbating the already existing issue of pollution. One way to reduce the environmental impact of this shift in daily habits is to recycle these items, e.g.

Multi-domain human-oriented approach to evaluate human comfort in outdoor environments.

Human comfort outdoors is widely investigated, but most studies explore the comfort domains singularly. This paper aimed to evaluate human comfort in parks, verifying the importance of using a multi-domain (simultaneously evaluating thermal, visual, acoustic, and air quality) and multi-disciplinary (combining environmental and social fields) approach. A walk through a pre-defined path from one park to another was repeated twice per day on four consecutive days in June, with three participants per walk.

A Global Building Occupant Behavior Database.

This paper introduces a database of 34 field-measured building occupant behavior datasets collected from 15 countries and 39 institutions across 10 climatic zones covering various building types in both commercial and residential sectors. This is a comprehensive global database about building occupant behavior. The database includes occupancy patterns (i.

A New Wearable System for Sensing Outdoor Environmental Conditions for Monitoring Hyper-Microclimate.

The rapid urbanization process brings consequences to urban environments, such poor air quality and the urban heat island issues. Due to these effects, environmental monitoring is gaining attention with the aim of identifying local risks and improving cities' liveability and resilience. However, these environments are very heterogeneous, and high-spatial-resolution data are needed to identify the intra-urban variations of physical parameters.

Environmental assessment of four waste cooking oil valorization pathways.

Global waste is expected to grow substantially by 2050, therefore, defining an effective waste management strategy is a crucial topic for both industry and academia. Nowadays, food and green waste, in particular, represent a large share of the total waste production. All this considered, effectively processing and eventually reusing materials such as waste cooking oil is of paramount importance.

Sustainable production and consumption in remote working conditions due to COVID-19 lockdown in Italy: An environmental and user acceptance investigation.

In response to the disruptive changes brought upon our society by the COVID-19 pandemic, most work activities and service providers had to resort to remote working. This is credited to reduce emissions for transportation, however the role of forced confinement within dwellings, especially if not designed for hosting working stations, deserves to be properly evaluated in terms of both user acceptance and long-term environmental impact. In this work, a dedicated survey campaign is used for investigating the potential pros and cons of remote working.

A Mobile Vehicle-Based Methodology for Dynamic Microclimate Analysis.

Accurate monitoring is critical for better understanding cities' microclimate conditions and safeguard citizens' health. Previous studies have performed microclimate analyses of urbanized areas by implementing data from either stable meteorological stations or satellites, or by developing mobile stations. Here, we present a vehicle-based monitoring campaign capable of monitoring both the scalar and directionally dependent variables that regulate the canopy layer environment.

Intra-urban microclimate investigation in urban heat island through a novel mobile monitoring system.

Monitoring microclimate variables within cities with high accuracy is an ongoing challenge for a better urban resilience to climate change. Assessing the intra-urban characteristics of a city is of vital importance for ensuring fine living standards for citizens. Here, a novel mobile microclimate station is applied for monitoring the main microclimatic variables regulating urban and intra-urban environment, as well as directionally monitoring shortwave radiation and illuminance and hence systematically map for the first time the effect of urban surfaces and anthropogenic heat.

Data collected by coupling fix and wearable sensors for addressing urban microclimate variability in an historical Italian city.

This article presents the data collected through an extensive research work conducted in a historic hilly town in central Italy during the period 2016-2017. Data concern two different datasets: long-term hygrothermal histories collected in two specific positions of the town object of the research, and three environmental transects collected following on foot the same designed path at three different time of the same day, i.e.

Cultural heritage microclimate change: Human-centric approach to experimentally investigate intra-urban overheating and numerically assess foreseen future scenarios impact.

Microclimate change related events affect cities total environment and therefore citizens' wellbeing. In a framework of urban resilience challenge, it is important to guarantee thermally comfortable conditions to dwellers in outdoors but also to preserve cultural heritage masterpieces for tourism and local socio-cultural identity. This work couples an innovative field monitoring at multiple scales and a validated numerical modelling effort to identify indoor and outdoor critical conditions at the present time and in the future, according to IPCC climate change forecast scenarios.

Effect of PCM on the Hydration Process of Cement-Based Mixtures: A Novel Thermo-Mechanical Investigation.

The use of Phase Change Material (PCM) for improving building indoor thermal comfort and energy saving has been largely investigated in the literature in recent years, thus confirming PCM’s capability to reduce indoor thermal fluctuation in both summer and winter conditions, according to their melting temperature and operation boundaries. Further to that, the present paper aims at investigating an innovative use of PCM for absorbing heat released by cement during its curing process, which typically contributes to micro-cracking of massive concrete elements, therefore compromising their mechanical performance during their service life. The experiments carried out in this work showed how PCM, even in small quantities (i.

A new wearable monitoring system for investigating pedestrians' environmental conditions: Development of the experimental tool and start-up findings.

Urban population is predicted to increase rapidly and massively in the next decades, by producing also the exacerbation of urban scale climate change imputable to anthropogenic actions, such as urban heat island. In this view, urban pedestrians assume a key role in determining city livability in dense built environments, typically much more polluted than suburban or rural areas. Despite that, urban heat island experimental studies are pretty focused on data collected by means of permanent microclimate stations for environmental monitoring, also coupled with satellite measurements or mobile stations equipped over transportation media.