A Smart Thermo-hygrometric Global Index for the Evaluation of Particularly Critical Urban Areas Quality: the City of Messina Chosen as a Case Study

The development of the city, as it has grown up to the present day, is no longer sustainable. The design of the city turns toward smart urban development which achieves the theoretical ideal of an environmental sustainability deeply linked to the well-being of the inhabitants. In this perspective, the idea of comfort is related to the achievement of thermohygrometric conditions satisfaction (both indoor and outdoor). The present work proposes an innovative tool evaluating the external environment quality applied to a case study: the Messina’s urban center. The well-being has been investigated from the point of view of temperature and relative humidity, taking not into account other aspects characterizing quality of the urban environment such as traffic, degree of urbanization, air pollution, etc.. For this reason the overall hygrothermal index formulation results of particular interest: this one can be also used to make comparable various results obtained at international level. One of the key properties of the global index is the comparability of the results, when applied to different realities. Such an important property can be exploited to compare the climatic characteristics of different cities and for different areas of the same city. In fact, with the help of multiple monitoring stations within the urban area, you would be able to detect the so-called heat islands. In this way it is possible constructing a map of the hygrometric comfort suitable to achieve better urban planning (for example improving thermal comfort through the construction of green areas).