Adaptive Thermal Comfort: Foundations and Analysis

Michael Humphreys is known for his pioneering work on the adaptive approach to comfort. He was Head of Human Factors at the Building Research Establishment, and has been a Research Professor at Oxford Brookes University. His scientific interests are the methodology of field studies of environmental comfort, the structure and statistical modelling of human adaptive behaviour, and the interactions between the several aspects of the indoor environment. Fergus Nicol has led a number of important research projects on comfort, which have influenced thinking internationally. He has authored numerous journal articles and other publications including guidance on comfort and overheating. Fergus convenes the Network for Comfort and Energy Use in Buildings and organises their regular international Windsor Conferences. Susan Roaf did her PhD on comfort and the windcatchers of Yazd, and after a decade working with Nicol and Humphreys at the Oxford Thermal Comfort Unit, she is now Professor of Architectural Engineering at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh. She is a teacher, researcher, designer and author and editor of 21 books including Ecohouse: A Design Guide and Adapting Buildings and Cities for Climate Change.

Part I: Foundations 1. Introduction to adaptive behaviour 2. Adaptive Beginnings 3. The emergence of the adaptive point of view 4. Summertime Overheating in Schools 5. The first international conference on thermal comfort 6. Adapting to enforced changes of temperature 7. The First Meta-analysis 8. Clothing outdoors and during sleep 9. Meta-analysis 2: relating climate to indoor comfort 10. The origin of the Oxford Thermal Comfort Unit 11. Fieldwork in Pakistan 12. Raising awareness of the adaptive approach 13. Beginning fieldwork at Oxford Brookes University 14. PMV and the results of field studies 15. Adaptation and the ASHRAE RP-884 database 16. Going international: the SCATs project Part II: Analysis 17. Introducing part 2 18. Using the Method of Successive Categories to explore the properties of thermal comfort scales 19. Developing, adapting and testing thermal subjective scales 20. A Simple Heat Exchange Model for Thermal Comfort Conditions 21. Regression analysis: general features and effects of data-selection and binning 22. The effects of error in the predictor-variable 23. Mutual relation between room temperature and subjective warmth 24. The relation between regression analysis and probit analysis 25. The dependence of subjective warmth on within-day changes in room temperature 26. Constructing Bell-shaped Curves for Comfort and Temperature 27. Tolerance of seasonal drift of indoor temperature 28. Estimating Neutral Temperatures from Survey Data 29. The adaptive relation between indoor neutral temperatures and the outdoor climate 30. Do people like to feel neutral? Semantic offsets and zero-errors 31. Clothing and thermal behaviour 32. Interactions among environmental variables, adaptation and overall comfort 33. Drawing the threads together