The effect of vegetation in outdoor thermal comfort in archaeological area in urban context

The characteristics of the outdoor microclimate influence directly the outdoor thermal comfort that depends on surface reflectance, green albedo, trees, buildings, sky view factors, etc. Several researches and studies about outdoor microclimate examine parts of cities, districts, squares, streets, parks, etc. and a part of this researches is about the effect of outdoor microclimate on people thermal comfort, e.g. measure following Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET). Thermal comfort in outdoor spaces has the crucial role of guaranteeing a comfortable staying in public places (such as squares, parks, etc.), since without thermal comfort people won’t stay in such places. For this reason, the research about tourism focuses more on outdoor thermal comfort than on indoor thermal comfort (e.g. in museums). An archaeological area can be seen as a specific place that represents both a museum and an outdoor space. In this paper we report a thermal comfort and microclimate case study regarding how the transformation of the urban area that surrounds an archaeological site could improve the outdoor comfort for tourists. This study uses the software ENVI-met to reproduce the actual area and six scenarios based on different urban modifications of said area: thermal variables such as air temperature, relative humidity, surface temperature and PET are considered to understand if said changes can have a positive or negative impact on thermal comfort of the tourists. Comparing real and simulated data we get to focus on the scenarios with the most positive impact, in order to understand how the city could change to improve the presence of tourists in the area and what are the key elements to reach the outdoor comfort.