A biometeorological procedure to determine the optimal outdoor clothing insulation for the forecasted weather

The impact of climate change on human health and on general biological systems has been widely described and most of the observational data series are consistent with the direction of change expected as a response to warming. The rapidity of this climate change requires that policymakers are kept informed of the manner in these changes can impact on human adaptation and behavior, to ensure thermal comfort and avoid or reduce risks. For this reason there is an increasing demand to assess the thermal climate in a human-biometeorologically manner. Clothing represents an important variable directly involved in the estimation of thermal load in relation to the physical activity and environmental parameters. mortality typical of populations living in temperate countries. The aim of the present work was to investigate the clothing factor related to climate changes, retrospectively evaluating the seasonal trend of the minimum clothing insulation value necessary to maintain the thermal neutrality in outdoor spaces in three major Italian cities over the second half of the last century. Subsequently an operational biometeorological procedure was developed to provide 72-hour forecast maps concerning the optimal outdoor minimum clothing insulation value to maintain thermal neutrality over Tuscany and all of Italy.