Evaluation of urban-rural bioclimatic comfort differences over a ten-year period in the sample of Erzincan city reconstructed after a heavy earthquake
In this study, the extents of the effects of a medium-sized, unindustrialized and well planned city, Erzincan, in Turkey on human thermal comfort conditions tried to be determined comparing the results of thermal comfort calculations, by means of meteorological data (from 1999 to 2008) taken from rural and urban areas and thermohygrometric index (THI) and predicted mean vote (PMV), two of the most widely used bioclimatic condition calculation indices. According to the findings, the effect of the city on human thermal comfort was found to be statistically not significant (p = 0.0001) and percentage difference of index values between the areas were 2.2 and 0.7% (urban is more comfortable) for THI and PMV, respectively. Urban characteristics of the city were evaluated for human thermal comfort and some suggestions were offered to improve the environmental quality of urban areas considering the principles of landscape architecture and land use planning.