Investigation of occupant thermal comfort in paediatric outpatient environments in Nanjing, China

Due to the distinct physiological and psychological conditions of children compared with adults, developing a thermal environment in paediatric outpatient departments where all types of occupants feel comfortable is challenging. However, this issue has not been addressed in previous research. To fill this gap, 3779 valid samples in paediatric outpatient environments were obtained to investigate the thermal comfort of various occupant groups, including preschool children, schoolchildren, adolescents, febrile children, adult visitors and hospital staff. The results indicated that younger children had lower neutral temperatures and a wider comfortable temperature range. Febrile children were highly sensitive to the thermal environment, whereas hospital staff exhibited strong psychological habituation and thermal tolerance. Furthermore, 25 adaptive thermal comfort models were developed for six occupant groups across the heating, transitional and cooling seasons, effectively adjusting the predicted mean vote model to align more closely with the actual thermal sensation of occupants. The comfortable temperature ranges of the paediatric outpatient department examined in this study were determined as 18.24 °C–19.84 °C, 19.04 °C–22.78 °C and 23.18 °C–25.04 °C for the heating, transitional and cooling seasons, respectively. This study provides a reference for designing a thermally comfortable environment in paediatric outpatient settings and is of significant importance for the development of child-friendly hospitals.