Abstract
The important requirement that COST Action 730 demanded of the physiological model to be used for the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) was its capability of accurate simulation of human thermophysiological responses across a wide range of relevant environmental conditions, such as conditions corresponding to the selection of all habitable climates and their seasonal changes, and transient conditions representing the temporal variation of outdoor conditions. In the first part of this study, available heat budget/two-node models and multi-node thermophysiological models were evaluated by direct comparison over a wide spectrum of climatic conditions. The UTCI-Fiala model predicted most reliably the average human thermal response, as shown by least deviations from physiologically plausible responses when compared to other models. In the second part of the study, this model was subjected to extensive validation using the results of human subject experiments for a range of relevant (steady-state and transient) environmental conditions. The UTCI-Fiala multi-node model proved its ability to predict adequately the human physiological response for a variety of moderate and extreme conditions represented in the COST 730 database. The mean skin and core temperatures were predicted with average root-mean-square deviations of 1.35 ± 1.00°C and 0.32 ± 0.20°C, respectively.
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Notes
COST Action 730 refers to a European Cooperation in Science and Technology Action number 730 to develop a Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI).
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank COST Office and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education and Research (SBF/SER) for funding this work as part of COST Action 730 under project C06.0023, members of the WG1 of COST Action 730 for their comments and discussions, Dr. Emiel den Hartog from TNO for providing some datasets and hosting a short-term scientific mission in his laboratory, and to Dr. Veronika Meyer and Dr. René Rossi from Laboratory for Protection and Physiology at Empa for their editorial input.
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Fig. S1
Comparison of dry heat loss (Qdry) predicted using different models for a wide range of environmental temperature (Ta). For model abbreviations see Table 1 (GIF 23 kb)
Fig. S2
Comparison of sweat evaporation at the skin (Esk) responses predicted using different models for a wide range of environmental temperature (Ta). For model abbreviations see Table 1 (GIF 26 kb)
Table S1
General description and root mean square deviations (rmsd) and mean deviations (bias) of all experiments of the COST 730 database for the validation study. Rcl and Recl are clothing intrinsic thermal and evaporative resistances and Rt is clothing total thermal resistance. (GIF 439 kb)
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Psikuta, A., Fiala, D., Laschewski, G. et al. Validation of the Fiala multi-node thermophysiological model for UTCI application. Int J Biometeorol 56, 443–460 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-011-0450-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-011-0450-5