Advances on Assessment of Bioclimatic Comfort Conditions at Home and Abroad

The evaluation of bioclimatic comfort conditions has very important theoretical meaning and practical value, not only beacause it can help travelers choose their favorate holiday destinations, but also because it can provide scientific foundation for the assessment of urban living environment. It has become a hot topic recently, driven by the flourishing tourism and the improvement of people’s living standard. The research history on assessment of bioclimatic comfort conditions, which may date back almost a century, is divided into three peroids based on a detailed survey of literature related to this topic over the past century. The infulential assessment models in each period are introduced. The historical background, basic idea and applicable conditions for each model are described in detail. The research shows that: ①bioclimatic comfort assessment models have been evolved from simple empirical models limited to space and time into complicated, impersonal, and universal energy balance models, which shows the trend of sophistication and objectivity; ②Today, empirical models are still widely used for the assessment of comfortable climates in China, and thus it is important to select the appropriate ones to make sure they are good for use for a study area or in a particular season; ③there are some problems calling for immediate resolution, such as to develop universal assessment models as well as to explore fine scale assessment techniques; ④the evaluation on featured comfortable climates, which might expand the study area of comfortable climates assessment, is an important research direction in the future.