High-resolution multi-scaling of outdoor human thermal comfort and its intra-urban variability based on machine learning

Abstract. As the frequency and intensity of heat waves will continue to increase in the future, accurate and high-resolution mapping and forecasting of human outdoor thermal comfort in urban environments is of great importance. This study presents a machine learning based outdoor thermal comfort model with a good trade-off between computational cost, complexity, and accuracy compared to common numerical urban climate models. The machine learning approach is basically an emulation of different numerical urban climate models. The final model consists of four sub-models that predict air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and mean radiant temperature based on meteorological forcing and geospatial data on building form, land cover, and vegetation. These variables are then combined into a thermal index (Universal Thermal Climate Index – UTCI). All four sub-model predictions and the final model output are evaluated using street-level measurements from a dense urban sensor network in Freiburg, Germany. The final model has a mean absolute error of 2.3 K. Based on a city-wide simulation for the city of Freiburg we demonstrate that the model is fast and versatile enough to simulate multiple years at hourly timesteps to predict street-level UTCI at 1 m spatial resolution for an entire city. Simulations indicate that neighborhood-averaged thermal comfort conditions vary widely between neighborhoods, even if they are attributed to the same local climate zones, e.g. due to differences in age and degree of urban vegetation. Simulations also show contrasting differences in the location of hot spots during the day and at night.