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2012-07-06 - Peter Bröde - UTCI_IndHealth_Draft20120706.pdf (1.14 MB)

The Universal Thermal Climate Index UTCI compared to ergonomics standards for assessing the thermal environment

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journal contribution
posted on 2015-09-28, 15:05 authored by Peter Broede, Krzysztof Blazejczyk, Dusan Fiala, George HavenithGeorge Havenith, Ingvar Holmer, Gerd Jendritzky, Kalev Kuklane, Bernhardt Kampmann
The growing need for valid assessment procedures of the outdoor thermal environment in the fields of public weather services, public health systems, urban planning, tourism & recreation and climate impact research raised the idea to develop the Universal Thermal Climate Index UTCI based on the most recent scientific progress both in thermo-physiology and in heat exchange theory. Following extensive validation of accessible models of human thermoregulation, the advanced multi-node ‘Fiala’ model was selected to form the basis of UTCI. This model was coupled with an adaptive clothing model which considers clothing habits by the general urban population and behavioral changes in clothing insulation related to actual environmental temperature. UTCI was developed conceptually as an equivalent temperature. Thus, for any combination of air temperature, wind, radiation, and humidity, UTCI is defined as the air temperature in the reference condition which would elicit the same dynamic response of the physiological model. This review analyses the sensitivity of UTCI to humidity and radiation in the heat and to wind in the cold and compares the results with observational studies and internationally standardized assessment procedures. The capabilities, restrictions and potential future extensions of UTCI are discussed.

Funding

We are grateful to COST office for the support within the European Union COST Action 730 "Towards a Universal Thermal Climate Index UTCI for Assessing the Thermal Environment of the Human Being". COST is supported by the EU RTD Framework Programme.

History

School

  • Design

Published in

INDUSTRIAL HEALTH

Volume

51

Issue

1

Pages

16 - 24 (9)

Citation

BROEDE, P. ... et al, 2013. The Universal Thermal Climate Index UTCI compared to ergonomics standards for assessing the thermal environment. Industrial Health, 51 (1), pp.16-24.

Publisher

© National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, JAPAN

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2013

Notes

This paper was published in the journal Industrial Health and is available here with the kind permission of the publisher.

ISSN

0019-8366

Language

  • en

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