BIO-met
BIO-met is a post-processing tool to calculate human Thermal Comfort and Thermal Comfort Indices based on your simulation data. It provides assessment of Dynamic Thermal Comfort (dPET) and a range of classic static indices such as PET, SET or UTCI.
Thermal Comfort Indices provided by BIO-met
BIO-met supports PMV/PPD (Predicted mean vote), PET* (Physiological Equivalent Temperature reviewed), dPET Dynamic PET, UTCI (Universal Thermal Climate Index) and SET* (Standard Effective Temperature), but more are likely to be integrated. The indices vary in their level of complexity and therefore calculation time. While UTCI is regression based and quick, PMV requires the iterative solution of one energy balance equation and PET requires the solution of two of them and is hence much more calculation time expensive. BIO-met supports parallel calculation to speed up the simulations.
However, it is important to understand, that a proper Thermal Comfort Index can only be calculated if the microclimate data used are correctly and/or sense-full. First you need valid ENVI-met simulation output, then you can calculate Thermal Comfort.
Follow the links to know more about the different indices:
- Standard Effective Temperature (SET) according to ASHRAE Standard 55-2013 with no further modifications
Which Comfort Index shall I use?
This is the big and holy question. The fact, that BIO-met already supports 4 of them gives a clue, that there is no generally accepted answer. We suggest reading the paper by Fischereit and Schlünzen (2018) (Paper in International Journal of Biometeorology, Open Access) for a detailed discussion on this matter.
In conclusion, they suggest -in relation to the options we have with PET- to use PET as a thermal comfort indicator. We totally agree with this suggestion.