Project Coolbit: Can your watch predict heat stress and thermal comfort sensation?
Name
Nazarian_2021_Environ._Res._Lett._16_034031.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
3.22 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
ba47291916590ce828cb1e468a82a5ee
Author(s)
Nazarian, Negin
Liu, Sijie
Kohler, Manon
Lee, Jason Kai Wei
Miller, Clayton
Chow, Winston TL
Alhadad, Sharifah Badriyah Badriyah
Martilli, Alberto
Quintana, Matias
Sunden, Lindsey
Date Issued
2021
Journal
Environmental Research Letters
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd Global climate is changing as a result of anthropogenic warming, leading to higher daily excursions of temperature in cities. Such elevated temperatures have great implications on human thermal comfort and heat stress, which should be closely monitored. Current methods for heat exposure assessments (surveys, microclimate measurements, and laboratory experiments), however, present several limitations: measurements are scattered in time and space and data gathered on outdoor thermal stress and comfort often does not include physiological and behavioral parameters. To address these shortcomings, Project Coolbit aims to introduce a human-centric approach to thermal comfort assessments. In this study, we propose and evaluate the use of wrist-mounted wearable devices to monitor environmental and physiological responses that span a wide range of spatial and temporal distributions. We introduce an integrated wearable weather station that records (a) microclimate parameters (such as air temperature and humidity), (b) physiological parameters (heart rate, skin temperature and humidity), and (c) subjective feedback. The feasibility of this methodology to assess thermal comfort and heat stress is then evaluated using two sets of experiments: controlled-environment physiological data collection, and outdoor environmental data collection. We find that using the data obtained through the wrist-mounted wearables, core temperature can be predicted non-invasively with 95 percent of target attainment within ±0.27 ◦C. Additionally, a direct connection between the air temperature at the wrist (Ta,w) and the perceived activity level (PAV) of individuals was drawn. We observe that with increased Ta,w, the desire for physical activity is significantly reduced, reaching 'Transition only' PAV level at 36 ◦C. These assessments reveal that the wearable methodology provides a comprehensive and accurate representation of human heat exposure, which can be extended in real-time to cover a large spatial distribution in a given city and quantify the impact of heat exposure on human life.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture
Singapore-MIT Alliance in Research and Technology (SMART)
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abd130
