Climatic and thermal comfort research orientations in outdoor spaces: From 1999 to 2017 in Iran

The level of satisfaction with an environment differs among individuals, which may be caused by social, psychological and physical factors. One of the environmental factors affecting physical and mental satisfaction, is the thermal condition of space. In recent years, the importance of thermal comfort has been accentuated due to the climate change and global warming, increasing the number of studies performed on this subject around the world. The objective of the present study is to identify the main concepts raised in Iran about outdoor thermal comfort by studying and classifying the studies in this field and then by identifying the characteristics of each distinguished category of studies. Thus, this study reviews 142 papers written in Iran that were published in the period between 1999 and 2017. The papers are first classified into two main categories (including fundamental studies on thermal comfort and practical studies) and three secondary categories that are subsets of the second main category (including macroscale, mesoscale, and microscale studies). Each category is then studied and analyzed in more details according to the regions and climates considered, methodology and research means, effective factors and thermal indices used for evaluation. Accordingly, strengths and weaknesses of previous studies are identified and suggestions for future studies on the microclimate scale have been made. Eventually, the conceptual model of thermal comfort studies is presented in different climatic scales.