Abstract

GUERRA, Pamela Smith  and  RUIZ, Cristián Henríquez. Proposal of an Indicator to Evaluate Urban Climate Quality: Case Study in a Medium-Sized Chilean Mediterranean City. Cuad. Geogr. Rev. Colomb. Geogr. [online]. 2021, vol.30, n.1, pp.144-157.  Epub Mar 02, 2021. ISSN 0121-215X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcdg.v30n1.79653.

The higher temperatures, big amount of radiation, low vegetation cover, the imperviousness of natural soil, among other urban-climates factors, generate great uncomfortable and inconvenience conditions for the urban population. Albeit some features of the cities are regulated by environmental norms (air quality, noise) and urbanistic norms (land uses, building rise), there is not a conceptual framework to define the urban climate quality in an integrated way. We proposed a novel indicator of Urban Quality Climate (UQC) that considers the query to experts, the calculation of climatic factors, and the modeling through the spatialization of statistical methods in Gis. The city of Chillan, Chile, was the case study that has a high quantity of daytime hours affected by summer thermal discomfort and episodes of very poor air quality in winter. A high environmental injustice has been observed due to a huge socioeconomic difference between socio-environmental conditions and UQC in different neighborhoods of the city. It means that the population with higher socioeconomic levels enjoys greater UQC in relation to the indicators of the poorest sectors.

Highlights: this corresponds to a research article in the framework of the ANID/Fondecyt Initiation Project n° 1080990. Its objective is to identify the factors that explain urban climatic quality. Its recognition provides information for the planning and design of the city.

Keywords : mean-size city; urban climate; multi-criteria assessment; indicator; urban planning.

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