Effective mitigation strategies for improving the outdoor thermal environment of university campuses using the ENVI-met Program

The outdoor thermal environment in universities directly affects the daily activities of teachers and students. This study investigated thermal comfort during summer in outdoor educational open spaces. The ENVI-met program was used to simulate the outdoor area and verify the accuracy of the model. The different greening rates and building shading cases were compared in the model. The outdoor thermal comfort levels were evaluated to analyze the mitigation strategies for outdoor thermal environment improvement. The results showed that the outdoor thermal environment was closely related to the shading level. Greening can significantly improve the outdoor thermal environment. After greening increased from 25% to 45%, air temperature (T a ), the mean radiation temperature (T mrt ), and physiological equivalent temperature (PET) of the research area will decrease by 3.2°C, 14.4°C, and 6.9°C, respectively. For the area with increased building shading, T a , T mrt , and PET decreased by 3°C, 8.73°C, and 4.3°C, respectively. When the building height is greater than 24 m, the improvement effect on thermal comfort by adding height is not obvious.