Microclimate and human health: an analysis of heat island mitiga-tion strategies in an urban outdoor environment through the Mediterranean Outdoor Comfort Index (MOCI)

Over the past years the concern of the international scientific community towards the study of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon has been growing. Such issue is particularly important in cities as Rome, where it is possible to experience intense heat strain conditions due to the combination of heat waves and Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. Therefore this study wants to examine different mitigation strategies of the urban microclimate by taking into consideration the campus of the “Sapienza” – University of Rome. This area presents a variety of environmental conditions in terms of urban mor-phology: indeed outdoor areas of the campus are characterized by a big parking space with an asphalt-covered ground, a garden with trees, a yard with a great fountain and typ-ical urban canyons. The study was carried out through the software ENVI-met which gave the possibility to reproduce the model of the site (experimentally calibrated) and exam-ine, in terms of outdoor thermal comfort, the different mitigation strategies implement-ed. It must be enhanced that this final step was performed by exerting the Mediterranean Outdoor Comfort Index (MOCI), an empirical index developed under real climatic condi-tions for the prediction of thermal perception of Mediterranean population.