Potentiality of urban indexes as indicators of the thermal quality of the urban air

ABSTRACT The thermal quality of the urban environment is nowadays one of the problems faced by cities. The form of urban occupation changes the energy balance within cities, often causing a warming of the air in the urban canopy layer and generating a variety of microclimates. Mapping the urban microclimates to enable the support of decisions in urban planning is a complex and long-term task. Aiming to demonstrate the thermal potentiality offered by some urban indexes usually applied by decision-makers, this paper seeks to investigate the influence of the coefficient of occupation, the floor space index and the vegetation cover index on the air temperature of urban microclimates. At an urban zone already consolidated, field measurements were performed, allowing the creation of a basis for the validation of a computational model applied for simulating the urban thermal environment. Finally, different indexes were simulated, and thermal maps were developed. The results showed that the thermal potential of the studied coefficients should be further explored, especially considering the coefficient of vegetation, whose range of values can lead to more significant differences in the air temperature.