Microclimatic Analysis and its Effect on Human Comfort; a Case Study of Minna, Niger State.

Abstract

One major pre-occupation of human climatology is to understand the effect of a given set of climatic conditions on the comfort level of individual. The modification of natural environment such as construction of buildings, roads and provision of open spaces are referred to as urban surfaces. All these coupled with human activities and industries, transportation and waste disposal have influence on the climate of the immediate environments to constitute city climate. City climates therefore provide the most extreme micro-climatic modifications which man has created. Looking at the present rate of urbanization and high rate of population explosion in tropical cities/ urban centres, it is pertinent to study the relationship between human health and comfort and the various micro-climatic parameters to determine the level of comfort ability or otherwise of these cities. The wide range of external and internal factors influences comfort of individual and what is comfortable to an individual at one time may not be comfortable to the same individual at another time. The paper made an attempt to determine the range of comfort in human beings who are exposed to different environmental conditions. Data used were collected from practical exercise on field study which was stretched from 7.00am to 7.00pm. Dry and wet bulb thermometers were used to to collect air temperatures from six (6) selected sampling areas within the city and 90 people of different sex, age, height and weight were interviewed to know their thermal sensation during the period covered. The data were computed using Effective Temperature (ET) and Relative Strain Index (RSI). The analysis of the result and responses showed that the environment was generally comfortable in the morning and towards the evening but hot and warm and not comfortable during the afternoon- though the level of comfort ability varies from one location to the other within the study area. Also the study reveals that micro climatic parameters like humidity, wind and temperature are more important in determining the comfort level of a given environment.