Robert D. Brown

Texas A&M University | TAMU · Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning

Whenever people spend time outdoors during hot weather, they are putting themselves in potentially stressful situations. Being able to predict whether a person is overheating can be critical in preventing heat-health issues. There is a clear relationship between body core temperature and heat health. However, measuring body core temperature is expe...

A fast courtyard wind simulation platform based on the parallel courtyard Lattice Boltzmann Method (CLBM) is proposed to achieve comprehensive optimization of courtyard design structure and wind environment performance. The simulation workflow of CLBM is designed and implemented, and its accuracy is validated using two benchmark cases and Qinghui G...

The present study introduces the development of the COMFAcourtyard model, which combines the strengths of COMFA, PET and SET* to create a reliable, practical and scientifically validated outdoor thermal comfort index for courtyards in hot and humid regions. To validate the model, four elements were implemented: validation in a real scenario (two cl...

The rapidly advancing knowledge of the interactions between people and their environment provides opportunities for designers to practice evidence-based landscape architecture (EBLA) in designing outdoor spaces. Recent studies have proposed some characteristics of successful EBLA projects, including the following: amicable skepticism; the questioni...

Rapid urbanization and high-density development are major drivers of global warming. The associations of spatial landscape patterns with urban thermal environments have been extensively investigated. Meanwhile, quantifying the cooling effects of landscape patterns on street-level outdoor thermal comfort has been less attempted. This study examined...

As human beings live in an environment where various factors interact and integrate, it seems vital to examine the effects of these factors on environmental perceptions. Outdoor thermal and acoustic environments are the main factors affecting the overall comfort of urban spaces. This research uses measurements and questionnaire surveys to explore t...

The excessive use of energy in buildings due to increased populations and economic development leads to more greenhouse gas emissions, which affect climate change and global warming. Changes in prevailing outdoor weather conditions significantly affect the energy systems of buildings through increased cooling and decreased heating. In this paper, 3...

Residents of public or subsidized housing experience social and environmental disadvantages and are therefore particularly vulnerable to disasters. Although research has highlighted risks associated with common disasters, such as floods and heatwaves, to date little is known about the impacts of infrequent disasters, such as a winter storm in a sub...

Climate change and anthropogenic activities are affecting the entire earth, where urban areas are not an exception, being affected by extreme weather conditions and environmental disturbances. Urban expansion and industrial development have negatively affected the local climatic condition due to green space deficiency, soil moisture loss, soil eros...

To tackle urban overheating induced by the combined effect of global warming and intensive urbanization, researchers have recommended assimilating microclimate-related strategies into urban design practices. Field measurements, playing a central role in urban climatology, have been widely applied worldwide. Reviewing the last five years' field meas...

Urban valleys as a primary element of the urban environment have played an undeniable role in the intensification of urban heat islands as climate change has increased in the past century. However, appropriate solutions can help improve outdoor thermal comfort (OTC) in these areas. In the present study, parameters related to thermal comfort outdoor...

Excess heat in urban environments is an increasing threat to human health and well-being. Furthermore, the increasingly important phenomenon of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) is exacerbating problems of livability in urban centers. Hence, there should be an increasing effort to assess the impact of heat mitigation strategies (HMSs) on outdoor thermal...

Leisure walking is affected by meteorological conditions. However, it is still not clear what scales of meteorological conditions and thermal status affect the number of people who choose to leisure walk. Using a time series regression, this study examines the heat—leisure walking relationship by analyzing the effect of the seasons, weather, microc...

Global climate change and urban heat island intensification are making many cities dangerously hot during heat waves. There is a need for a clear process for applying microclimate information in urban design to create cooler cities. A recent paper points out the gaps in research methodology and suggests the need for implementation-oriented research...

Cities are becoming hotter due to global climate change and urban heat island intensification. This has resulted in an increased number of hospitalizations and deaths during heatwaves. Previous studies have reported a positive correlation between moderate to high sky view factor (SVF) values and land surface temperature (LST), but extremely low SVF...

It is well known that extremely hot weather causes heat-related health issues. Health problems, especially in urban areas, are becoming increasingly important due to urban heat island effect. Understanding the impact of neighborhood characteristics is important for research into the relationship between thermal environment and human health. The obj...

This scoping review aimed to identify current evidence and gaps in the field of long-term space nutrition. Specifically, the review targeted critical nutritional needs during long-term manned missions in outer space in addition to the essential components of a sustainable space nutrition system for meeting these needs. The search phrase “space food...

Cities inadvertently create warmer and drier urban climate conditions than their surrounding areas through urbanization that replaces natural surfaces with impervious materials. These changes cause heat-related health problems and many studies suggest microclimatic urban design (MUD) as an approach to address these problems. In MUD-related research...

Cities have faced rapid urbanization, which has changed the impact of the micro-thermal environment on residents' thermal comfort level. Therefore, planners need to understand the city's physical environment so they can identify and ameliorate the effects of the changing in micro-thermal environment. Researchers also need to identify and understand...

Global climate change has increased the risks of extreme weather-related disasters, leading to severe public health burdens. In February 2021, Winter Storm Uri brought severe cold to southern United States and caused unprecedented health and safety concerns. Residents in subsidized rental housing were among the most vulnerable to cold stress during...

The white paper first outlines the state of inequity in food security/sovereignty in our area of focus, taking into account historical context as well as emerging and ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and community and policy responses to it. We then discuss a food acquisition intervention, structured as a longitudinal, collaborative researc...

This study investigates the diurnal, seasonal, monthly and temporal variation of land surface temperature (LST) and surface urban heat island intensity (SUHII) over the Isfahan metropolitan area, Iran, during 2003–2019 using MODIS data. It also examines the driving factors of SUHII like cropland, built-up areas (BI), the urban–rural difference in e...

Place-based structural inequalities can have critical implications for the health of vulnerable populations. Historical urban policies, such as redlining, have contributed to current inequalities in exposure to intra-urban heat. However, it is unknown whether these spatial inequalities are associated with disparities in heat-related health outcomes...

Heat related morbidity and mortality, especially during extreme heat events, are increasing due to climate change. More Americans die from heat than from all other natural disasters combined. Identifying the populations and locations that are under high risk of heat vulnerability is important for urban planning and design policy making as well as h...

Due to global warming and rapid urbanization, the frequency and intensity of extreme heat events in the United States have increased. Particularly for pedestrians, excessive heat has been reported as a critical barrier to walking activity, which, in turn, can deteriorate walkability and urban vitality. By using a multilevel spatial approach, this s...

Urban heat islands (UHI) in a city tend to vary with changes in time and space. To effectively cope with the accelerating intensity of UHI due to global warming and the resulting damage, it is essential to accurately analyze and understand the spatial and temporal variations of UHI. This study conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to bette...

Projections show that Earth's climate will continue to warm concurrent with increases in the percentage of the world's elderly population. With an understanding that the body's resilience to the heat degrades as it ages, these coupled phenomena point to serious concerns of heat-related mortality in growing elderly populations. As many of the people...

Thermal comfort research has utilized various sensors and models to estimate the mean radiant temperature (MRT) experienced by a human, including the standard black globe thermometer (SGT), acrylic globe thermometers (AGT), and cylindrical radiation thermometers (CRT). Rather than directly measuring radiation, a temperature is measured in the cente...

The severity of urban heat islands (UHIs) is increasing due to global and urban climate change. The damage caused by UHIs is also increasing. To establish a plan to improve the deteriorating thermal environment in cities due to UHIs and to minimize the damage, further research is needed to accurately estimate and analyze the intensity and magnitude...

Global climate change and urban heat island intensification are making many cities dangerously hot during heat waves and uncomfortably hot much of the time. Research has identified ways that urban environments can be designed to reduce the heat, but much of the information is too technical or has not been interpreted or communicated so as to be ava...

There is a high and growing incidence of skin cancer associated with overexposure to the sun. Most of a person's exposure occurs during their first eighteen years of life. While many children are taught to wear hats and sunscreen, studies indicate these are inadequate. There is a pressing need to improve the design of our landscapes to reduce expos...

Total impervious area (TIA) is one of the most common measures for predicting runoff yield in hydrologic studies and regulating urbanization in land use policy. Directly connected impervious area (DCIA), a subset of TIA, represents the hydraulic connection between development and underground sewer systems. Which indicator to use in runoff predictio...

Problems caused by urban climate phenomena such as urban heat island intensification, nuisance winds, or the lack of ventilation, are a growing concern with urban population growth and aging infrastructure. While many possible solutions are known, effective adaptation strategies have been insufficiently implemented to ameliorate urban climate probl...

This study aims at revealing the effects of UV radiation on the burden of disease and the optimal level of its exposure for long-term space habitation using the systematic literature review. The study objectives are to reveal key determinants of UV Exposure, evaluation methods for UV Risk and Disease, optimal Exposure UV Level for Minimum burden of...

Urban climate manifests itself through thermal and wind environments specific to cities and can cause wind danger or overheating. Cities can benefit from preventing these effects through adaptation measures. However, before any action can be taken in improving these urban climate conditions, an awareness of the problems is needed. Numerous studies...

Current methods for estimating heat vulnerability of young athletes use a heat index (HI) or a wet bulb globe thermometer (WBGT), neither of which fully include the environmental or physiological characteristics that can affect a person's heat budget, particularly where activity occurs on a synthetic surface. This study analyzed and compared the st...

Global climate change and urban heat island intensification are making the outdoor environment more thermally uncomfortable during hot weather, and more dangerous during heat waves. This has generated considerable interest in the development of models to estimate the effect of heat on human bodies. However, it is not clear that which model provides...

Ultraviolet radiation (UVR) can be hazardous to humans, especially children, and is associated with sunburn, melanoma, and the risk of skin cancer. Understanding and estimating adults’ and children’s UVR exposure is critical to the design of effective interventions and the production of healthy UVR environments. Currently, there are limitations to...

Trees are considered to be an effective tool for improving human thermal comfort in hot climates and have been widely used in landscape architecture. However, it is not always clear how trees affect human-environment energy fluxes. In this study, an in-depth analysis of four common tree species was undertaken based on comprehensive field measuremen...

The frequency and duration of heatwaves are steadily increasing as climate change becomes more serious. These changes particularly endanger the health of those who must work outdoors in hot environments. This study introduces a novel approach to monitor the heat-health of airport outdoor workers using infrared thermography. The faces of airport wor...

Many children growing up in cities are spending less time outdoors to escape the heat. This is contributing to childhood obesity and the prospect of a range of diseases in adulthood. When landscape architects and urban designers use a human thermal comfort model to test their designs for children’s comfort, they would have to use a model essentiall...

According to the challenge of global warming, trees play an effective role in reducing heat islands and improving thermal comfort. In this study, the impact of urban greening on microclimate and pedestrian comfort is studied using ENVI met v4 for a residential district in Tabriz, Iran. In-situ measurements of air temperature and relative humidity h...

Landscape architecture programs in the United States are assessed based on the quality of the professional education received by their students. Research is becoming an increasingly important part of the profession as evidence-based landscape architecture grows, and it is critical that university faculty provide information that can be used in prof...

More than 80% of the people in the USA and Canada live in cities. Urban development replaces natural environments with built environments resulting in limited access to outdoor environments which are critical to human health and well-being. In addition, many urban open spaces are unused because of poor design. This paper describes case studies wher...

Most human energy budget models consider a person to be approximately cylindrical in shape when estimating or measuring the amount of radiation that they receive in a given environment. Yet, the most commonly used instrument for measuring the amount of radiation received by a person is the globe thermometer. The spherical shape of this instrument w...

Global climate change and intensifying heat islands have reduced human thermal comfort and health in urban outdoor environments. However, there has been little research that has focused on how microclimates affect human thermal comfort, both psychologically and physiologically. We investigated the effect of a range of landscape microclimates on hum...

The behavioral repertoire and environmental feature needs for thermoregulatory comfort have not been reported in the literature for large captive exotics. An observational study was done to investigate the behavioral repertoire of tigers via continuous observation, while focusing on thermoregulatory behavior, in order to examine behavioral and ther...

The 2020 Olympic Games marathon will be run through the streets of Tokyo on the mornings of August 2nd and 9th, a time of year that is typically hot, sunny, and humid. Few studies have assessed the potential impact of extreme heat along the marathon course to understand the multiple factors (e.g., radiation, wind flow) affecting human thermal comfo...

More than half of the people in the world now live in cities and this proportion is expected to continue to increase. [...]

In the wake of major earthquakes public open spaces become hubs for both short-term disaster response efforts and support longer-term recovery needs. At present, few open spaces are actually designed to support these intermittent but critical uses. Currently, there is no consolidated body of knowledge or resource for landscape architects designing...

Mass sporting events in the summertime are influenced by underlying weather patterns, with high temperatures posing a risk for spectators and athletes alike. To better understand weather variations in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) during the Pan American Games in 2015 (PA15 Games), Environment and Climate Change Canada deployed a mesoscale monitor...

The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games will be held in July and August. As these are the hottest months in Tokyo, the risk of heat stress to athletes and spectators in outdoor sporting events is a serious concern. This study focuses on the marathon races, which are held outside for a prolonged time, and evaluates the potential heat stress of marathon runners...

School children can receive too much ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation on schoolgrounds, leading to sunburn (erythema) and risking melanoma. Yet receiving too little UVB can result in vitamin D deficiency, which is needed for bone metabolism and may be linked to cancer, hypertension, and influenza. We measured the UVB received by school children using...

Landscape architecture is a young discipline relative to other design-based fields, such as engineering or architecture. The unique knowledge, processes, and capacities of landscape architects—central requirements of a recognizable profession—are currently broad and largely undefined. The profession needs to have clearly defined knowledge domains r...

Urban residents are at risk of health-related illness during extreme heat events but the dangers are not equal in all parts of a city. Previous studies have found a relationship between physical characteristics of neighborhoods and the number of emergency medical response (EMR) calls. We used a human energy budget model to test the effects of lands...

Winter clothing provides insulation for almost all of a person's body, but in most situations, a person's face remains uncovered even in cold windy weather. This exploratory study used thermal imagery to record the rate of cooling of the faces of volunteers in a range of winter air temperatures and wind speeds. Different areas of the faces cooled a...

Many cities are experiencing an Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect and a substantial amount of research has focused on ameliorating those conditions. However, few studies have proposed taking advantage of them. This research investigated the potential for growing food crops in hot urban microclimates that would not grow successfully in the surrounding...

Many cities are experiencing an Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect and a substantial amount of research has focused on ameliorating those conditions. However, few studies have proposed taking advantage of them. This research investigated the potential for growing food crops in hot urban microclimates that would not grow successfully in the surrounding...

‘Research Through Designing’ (RTD) is a research method that is based on the active employment of designing in the research process. Often, RTD is necessary to generate knowledge that is relevant for design such as design guidelines or prototypes. A broad range of RTD methods can be used to produce such results: post-positivist, constructivist, par...

Two thirds of Canadians reside in urban areas and 85% of recent population growth occurs in these areas. The intensity and duration of extreme hot weather events are predicted to increase in Canadian cities and in cities globally. It is well established that human suffering due to extreme heat is exacerbated in urban as compared to rural environmen...

This study examined research productivity of landscape architecture faculty at North American universities and compared them with the results of a 1998 study. A questionnaire was mailed to all 457 individuals listed by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) as assistant professors, associate professors, and professors. Results in...

Many inhabitants of cities throughout the world suffer from health problems and discomfort that are caused by overheating of urban areas, and there is compelling evidence that these problems will be exacerbated by global climate change. Most cities are not designed to ameliorate these effects although it is well-known that this is possible, especia...

Humans interact with urban microclimates through exchanges of energy. A surplus of energy can create thermal discomfort and be detrimental to human health. Many cities in warm regions all over the world are forecast to become very hot through global climate change. Some cities already experience extreme heat and have done so for centuries. We condu...