A comprehensive methodology for assessing outdoor thermal comfort in touristic city of Porto (Portugal)

Urban tourism's impact on intra-urban temperature differences and the latter's influence on thermal comfort in public space, in a context of climate change, is still not clear. When it comes to urban tourism, few are the studies which assess human thermal comfort in the form of visual and cartographic representation. This paper seeks to fill this gap by obtaining data through measurement campaigns carried out in a motor vehicle during the summers and winters of 2019 and 2020, in a total of 27 nights and 7 afternoons. The Portuguese city of Porto was the selected destination. It revealed very useful in identifying the intra-urban temperature differences and the patterns of human thermal comfort in different days of the year. Based on the mobile measurement campaign carried out in the aforementioned period, the main thermal patterns and implications to thermal comfort in the central area of Porto were summarized. There is a multiplicity of situations of thermal comfort and spatial variations of discomfort due to cold and heat stress. These conditions are particularly relevant during the summer season, when the urban heat island intensity can exceed 3.0 °C. The proposed methodology could be very useful for researchers in the field of tourism climatology and policymakers, given that it contributes with adaptive measures regarding the tourism sector in the face of intense vulnerability to climate change.