ON THE DESIGN OF A NEW HUMAN COMFORT INDEX

In designing the human comfort index (CI) used in Guangzhou, a Gaussian curve was adopted as the fundamental profile to develop a "straw hat" model of comfort index. The model projects low or high temperatures into low index values and the moderate temperatures into high index values. Air temperature was chosen as a basic factor in the model. Other factors such as humidity, sunshine and wind speed were introduced by considering them as temperature departures to an equivalent apparent temperature (EAT). Since the index is a relative index, 25(C was chosen as an ideal apparent temperature (the most comfortable state) and a maximum CI value of 100 was assigned at this temperature. While in other circumstances, the index would be lower than 100. By utilizing this model, the daily comfort index values had been calculated for Guangzhou city for 1998-1999, using mean temperature, mean humidity, mean wind speed and total hours of sunshine. Results show that the new model was reasonable and practicable. Not only could it reflect the monthly variation of human comfort in Guangzhou, but also was sensitive to short-term changes of weather conditions.