• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.61-77
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• 2024

The purpose of this study was to develop a method for rapidly diagnosing urban thermal comfort using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based data. The research was conducted at Changwon National University's College of Engineering site and Yongji Park, both located in Changwon, Gyeongsangnam-do. Baseline data were collected using field measurements and UAVs. Specifically, the study calculated field measurement-based thermal comfort indices PET and UTCI, and used UAVs to create and analyze vegetation index (NDVI), sky view factor (SVF), and land surface temperature (LST) images. The results showed that UAV-predicted PET and UTCI had high correlations of 0.662 and 0.721, respectively, within a 1% significance level. The explanatory power of the prediction model was 43.8% for PET and 52.6% for UTCI, with RMSE values of 6.32℃ for PET and 3.16℃ for UTCI, indicating that UTCI is more suitable for UAV-based thermal comfort evaluation. The developed method offers significant time-saving advantages over traditional approaches and can be utilized for real-time urban thermal comfort assessment and mitigation planning