Over the past two decades, an increasing amount of research has been directed toward climatic influences on behavior and the built environment. The evidence from this research has lead to the development of recommended site interventions to improve energy performance in individual buildings and to mitigate extreme climate conditions in exterior public spaces in order to make these environments more comfortable."Comfort", as a measure of performance, is usually based upon one of the many indices of thermal comfort. These indices, however, have been developed specifically for use in indoor environments and were later readapted for exterior environments. Previous research has begun to show that standards designed for and developed in interior settings, are not necessarily applicable for use in exterior environments where climate is only partially controllable and behavior is less defined. Early preliminary studies have shown that considerable activity will occur outside of the boundaries formally established as “comfortable” by any particular thermal index.

In contradiction to the traditional thermal performance measures that determine specific climatological conditions to support a particular behavior, this research uses two bio-comfort charts and a thermal indexing equation to establish what specific behaviors will occur under particular climate profiles.

This study takes an annual record of regional and site specific climate data and applies it to existing comfort prediction models to ascertain if such applications are legitimate and if these applications are capable of predicting the frequency and duration of observed social behavior in an outdoor urban setting.