Real-time measurement of wind environment comfort in urban areas by Environmental Internet of Things

Abstract

Wind environment comfort (WEC) can have major impacts on people who use outdoor spaces within a city. WEC in urban areas is directly linked to the configuration of urban geometry, including street axes, building heights, and other attributes. Thus, it is valuable to provide an outdoor WEC measure at pedestrian level in as much detail and close to real time as possible. In this paper, a system for the real-time measurement of WEC (SRTM-WEC), one of the subsystems of Environmental Internet of Things (EIoT), was established to conduct real-time measurements of the WEC value in Pingtan Island, Fujian Province. Four layers were employed in the system to handle data measurement, synchronized data transfer, data manipulation, and application tasks. It was demonstrated that EIoT enabled the system to successfully perform real-time WEC measurement in urban area. Six favorable attributes obtained for the system include low cost, small size, ease of installation, low-cost operation, ease of retrofit in existing spaces, and independence from specific manufacturers.

Keywords:

• wind environment comfort (WEC)
• Environmental Internet of Things (EIoT)
• wireless sensor networks
• urban planning
• Pingtan Island

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by One Hundred Talents Program and Innovation Projects of Chinese Academy of Sciences (KZCX2-YW-453). The authors would like to thank Jonathan Vause, for assistance with editing the paper and everyone working in the Research Center of Digital Network for Urban Environment, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Notes

^†Co-first author.