Our responses to our thermal environment have a considerable effect on our performance and behavior, not least in the realm of work. There has been considerable scientific investigation of these responses and formal methods have been developed for environmental evaluation and design. In recent years these have been developed to the extent that detailed national and international standards of practice have now become feasible. This new edition of Ken Parson's definitive text brings us back up to date. He covers hot, moderate and cold environments, and defines these in terms of six basic parameters: air temperature, radiate temperature, humidity, air velocity, clothing worn, and the person's activity. There is a focus on the principles and practice of human response, which incorporates psychology, physiology and environmental physics with applied ergonomics. Water requirements, computer modeling and computer-aided design are brought in, as are current standards. Special populations, such as the aged or disabled and specialist environments such as those found in vehicles are also considered. This book continues to be the standard text for the design of environments for humans to live and work safely, comfortably and effectively, and for the design of materials which help the same people cope with their environments.

Our responses to our thermal environment have a considerable effect on our performance and behavior, not least in the realm of work. There has been considerable scientific investigation of these responses and formal methods have been developed for environmental evaluation and design. In recent years these have been developed to the extent that detailed national and international standards of practice have now become feasible. This new edition of Ken Parson's definitive text brings us back up to date. He covers hot, moderate and cold environments, and defines these in terms of six basic parameters: air temperature, radiate temperature, humidity, air velocity, clothing worn, and the person's activity. There is a focus on the principles and practice of human response, which incorporates psychology, physiology and environmental physics with applied ergonomics. Water requirements, computer modeling and computer-aided design are brought in, as are current standards. Special populations, such as the aged or disabled and specialist environments such as those found in vehicles are also considered. This book continues to be the standard text for the design of environments for humans to live and work safely, comfortably and effectively, and for the design of materials which help the same people cope with their environments.

Our responses to our thermal environment have a considerable effect on our performance and behavior, not least in the realm of work. There has been considerable scientific investigation of these responses and formal methods have been developed for environmental evaluation and design. In recent years these have been developed to the extent that detailed national and international standards of practice have now become feasible. This new edition of Ken Parson's definitive text brings us back up to date. He covers hot, moderate and cold environments, and defines these in terms of six basic parameters: air temperature, radiate temperature, humidity, air velocity, clothing worn, and the person's activity. There is a focus on the principles and practice of human response, which incorporates psychology, physiology and environmental physics with applied ergonomics. Water requirements, computer modeling and computer-aided design are brought in, as are current standards. Special populations, such as the aged or disabled and specialist environments such as those found in vehicles are also considered. This book continues to be the standard text for the design of environments for humans to live and work safely, comfortably and effectively, and for the design of materials which help the same people cope with their environments.

Thermal comfort is a desirable state familiar to all people. Providing inspirational indoor and outdoor environments that provide thermal comfort, in the context of energy use and climate change, is a challenge for the 21st century. This book provides an up-to-date, comprehensive coverage of thermal comfort from principles and theory to practical application. The book begins with current knowledge and understanding of thermal comfort and its application to providing thermal conditions for indoor and outdoor environments. It integrates and presents new ideas to provide a comprehensive model of thermal comfort so that we can move on from the 20th and early 21st century and provide a focus for developments for future decades. This book will be of interest to practitioners and students and anyone involved with fields such as environmental design, physiology, ergonomics, human factors, industrial hygiene, architecture, health and safety and air conditioning. • Provides current thermal comfort standards and regulations • Describes the PMV, PPD, ET* and SET thermal comfort indices • Discusses adaptive thermal comfort, adaptive opportunity and explains why we have not moved towards a more dynamic and interactive approach to providing thermal comfort • Presents a new model relating thermal discomfort to performance • Shows how to construct a computer model of thermal comfort • Offers how to conduct a thermal comfort survey Human Thermal Comfort provides new ideas for achieving thermal comfort for offices, vehicles, atriums, and plazas of the future.

Environmental Ergonomics addresses the problems of maintaining human comfort, activity and health in stressful environments. Its subject areas include thermal environments, illumination, noise and hypo- and hyperbaric environments. The book concentrates fundamentally on the way the thermal environment has affected human comfort, health and performance from the age of cave-dwellings to our age of skyscrapers. This book contains only papers selected from the 10th ICEE held in Japan 23-27 September 2002. The ICEE has been held biannually since 1982, and has firmly established itself as the world's most distinguished conference in its field, offering the ideal forum for research scientists, medical doctors, engineers, administrators, technicians, healthcare professionals and students to share their work and ideas. - Selected papers from the 10th International Conference on Environmental Ergonomics held in Japan, 23-27 September 2002. They have been revised and peer-reviewed. - Papers included in this text have been widely recognised as the catalyst for the recent advances witnessed in Environmental Ergonomics in Asia. They strike a balance between academia and industries' views on environmental ergonomics. - Add this volume to your copy of the Elsevier Ergonomics Book Series.

In the ten years since the publication of the second edition of Human Thermal Environments: The Effects of Hot, Moderate, and Cold Environments on Human Health, Comfort, and Performance, Third Edition, the world has embraced electronic communications, making international collaboration almost instantaneous and global. However, there is still a need

The principal objective of this book is to provide information needed to define human thermal behavior quantitatively. Human thermal physiology is defined using mathematical methods routinely employed by physicists and engineers, but seldom used by physiologists. Major sections of the book are devoted to blood flow, sweating, shivering, heat transfer within the body, and heat and mass transfer from skin and clothing to the environment. Simple algebraic models based on experimental data from a century of physiological investigation are developed for bodily processes. The book offers an invaluable source of information for physiologists and physical scientists interested in quantitative approaches to the fascinating field of human thermoregulation.

This book highlights the importance of outdoor thermal comfort for improving urban living quality in the context of urban planning and urban geometry design. It introduces readers to a range of assessment methods and applications of outdoor thermal comfort and addresses urban geometry and thermal environment at the neighbourhood scale using real-world examples and parametric studies. In addition, the subjective evaluations by urban dwellers and numerical modelling tools introduced in this book provide not only a comprehensive assessment of outdoor thermal comfort but also an integrated approach to using thermal comfort indicators as a standard in high-density cities. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable guide for urban climate researchers, urban planners, and designers, and policymakers pursuing more liveable urban environments.

The fundamental function of buildings is to provide safe and healthy shelter. For the fortunate they also provide comfort and delight. In the twentieth century comfort became a 'product' produced by machines and run on cheap energy. In a world where fossil fuels are becoming ever scarcer and more expensive, and the climate more extreme, the challenge of designing comfortable buildings today requires a new approach. This timely book is the first in a trilogy from leaders in the field which will provide just that. It explains, in a clear and comprehensible manner, how we stay comfortable by using our bodies, minds, buildings and their systems to adapt to indoor and outdoor conditions which change with the weather and the climate. The book is in two sections. The first introduces the principles on which the theory of adaptive thermal comfort is based. The second explains how to use field studies to measure thermal comfort in practice and to analyze the data gathered. Architects have gradually passed responsibility for building performance to service engineers who are largely trained to see comfort as the ‘product’, designed using simplistic comfort models. The result has contributed to a shift to buildings that use ever more energy. A growing international consensus now calls for low-energy buildings. This means designers must first produce robust, passive structures that provide occupants with many opportunities to make changes to suit their environmental needs. Ventilation using free, natural energy should be preferred and mechanical conditioning only used when the climate demands it. This book outlines the theory of adaptive thermal comfort that is essential to understand and inform such building designs. This book should be required reading for all students, teachers and practitioners of architecture, building engineering and management – for all who have a role in producing, and occupying, twenty-first century adaptive, low-carbon, comfortable buildings.

Our thermal environment is as rich in cultural associations as our visual, acoustic, olfactory, and tactile environments. This book explores the potential for using thermal qualities as an expressive element in building design. Until quite recently, building technology and design has favored high-energy-consuming mechanical methods of neutralizing the thermal environment. It has not responded to the various ways that people use, remember, and care about the thermal environment and how they associate their thermal sense with their other senses. The hearth fire, the sauna, the Roman and Japanese baths, and the Islamic garden are discussed as archetypes of thermal delight about which rituals have developed—reinforcing bonds of affection and ceremony forged in the thermal experience. Not only is thermal symbolism now obsolete but the modern emphasis on central heating systems and air conditioning and hermetically sealed buildings has actually damaged our thermal coping and sensing mechanisms. This book for the solar age could help change all that and open up for us a new dimension of architectural experience. As the cost of energy continues to skyrocket, alternatives to the use of mechanical force must be developed to meet our thermal needs. A major alternative is the use of passive solar energy, and the book will provide those interested in solar design with a reservoir of ideas.