Urban Microclimate - The case study of Polito Campus: Castello del Valentino = Urban Microclimate - The case study of Polito Campus: Castello del Valentino.

The increase in emissions and global warming are taking our planet for more severe and raging consequences in the climatic events, such as unusual heat waves and increased rate of extraordinary rainfall, pushing the scholars globally to understand and study these occurrences as serious influences on the population. The mitigation of the causes of climate change and the local adaptation should mainly be triggered in the cities since cities hold more than half of the world’s population, and its where the consumption of soil should be controlled the most. The goal of these strategies is to stop worsening the climate conditions in the future by reacting to this snowball with a resilient perception. After this consideration for the climatic crisis, the aim of this thesis project was formulated: Understanding the microclimatic conditions of the built environment is the main goal of simulating the microclimatic variables of the analyzed area (such as the potential air temperature, wind speed, surface temperature), also simulating the physiological equivalent temperature (PET) for understanding the effects of these conditions on the inhabitants of the area. After having these results in hand, it will be much easier to understand the criticalities of this urban area, consequently coming up with suitable mitigating strategies and better adaptation to the microclimate. To do so, the thesis passed through several parts of analysis and research, to highlight the effects of the microclimatic conditions present in our daily used outdoor areas. The parts of the thesis could be divided into two sections, the first is a research and the second is an experimental section. As for the research section, the first part talks about the global climatic crisis our planet is facing, stating its scales, levels, causes, effects, and its microclimatic effect in our urban areas such as the UHI, suggesting some global approaches undertaken to tackle this problem. In the second part, the talk goes in a concentrated way on the mitigating and adapting domains and strategies, suggesting some main design strategies for the adaptation and mitigation of the outdoor microclimatic conditions. This part also mentions the importance of having a climatological urban planning design in the urban areas and its effects on comfort and sustainability. Reaching, lastly, the importance the morphologies of the area stating the most important morphological strategies in designing better outdoor thermal comfort. Also in the domain of the research section, the third part examines some global projects done in different contexts, tackling different issues in their microclimates through different strategies of design. Also, some research papers, that used the Computational Fluid Dynamics software ENVI-met, were analyzed, to understand more the microclimatic variables and its effects on the thermal outdoor comfort. This part clarifies more the effectiveness of the strategies used to mitigate and adapt to the microclimatic conditions. On the other hand, in the experimental section, the thesis takes the case of the Valentino Castle in Turin to study and simulate its microclimatic conditions. In this section, the work is introduced in part 4 which analyzes the general context and conditions of Turin and goes in-depth into Valentino Park and its castle area showing the main features and structure of the area. Then, in part 5, the methodology of the simulation is presented, where the Computational Fluid Dynamics software ENVI-met was used to cal