A conversation with urban climatologist Ariane Middel, Ph.D, exploring thermal comfort, urban shade for pedestrians, and human-climate interactions in cities.
Join Eduardo Guerrero, an urban designer based in Tucson, as he talks with urban idealists and designers about their work and stories. Listen in as he engages these relevant thinkers in reflections and conversations about the environment and culture.
02 Ariane Middel, Ph.D. Urban shade / Phoenix
Bio:
Ariane Middel, Ph.D. Computer Science, University of Kaiserslautern, Germany 2008.
Ariane’s research interests lie in the interdisciplinary field of urban climate with focus on climate-sensitive urban form, design, landscapes, and infrastructure in the face of extreme heat and climatic uncertainty.
For the past eight years, Middel has advanced the field of urban climate science through applied and solutions-oriented research employing quantitative and qualitative field observations, local and microscale climate modeling, and geovisualization to investigate sustainability challenges related to heat, thermal comfort, Urban Heat Islands, water use, energy use, and human-climate interactions in cities.
Her ongoing research is focused on developing better models and metrics to quantify urban heatscapes as they are experienced by pedestrians. She currently develops a thermal comfort model based on an innovative big data approach using Street View data, deep learning, and novel environmental sensing techniques such as the biometeorological MaRTy cart.
Middel directs the SHaDE Lab at ASU and is an active member of the Urban Climate Research Center (UCRC) and the Central Arizona–Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER) program. She currently serves a 3-year term (2019-2022) on the Executive Board of the International Association of Urban Climate (IAUC), the premier international organization for researchers engaged in all aspects of urban climate scholarship. She is also a Board member of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Built Environment (BUE), a member of the International Society of Biometeorology (ISB), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Middel joined the School of Arts, Media and Engineering (AME) as an assistant professor in 2018. She has a joint appointment with the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence (SCAI). Previously, she was an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University and an assistant research professor with the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at ASU. She received her doctorate in computer science (visualization) from a German National Science Foundation-funded international graduate school at University of Kaiserslautern, Germany and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering from University of Bonn, Germany. Source: https://herbergerinstitute.asu.edu/profile/ariane-middel
Workplace: Arizona State University
Current city: Phoenix, Arizona
Website: https://shadelab.asu.edu/
Twitter: @ArianeMiddel
Publications links:
Ariane Middel, Saud AlKhaled, Florian Arwed Schneider, Björn Hagen, Paul Coseo. (2021). 50 Grades of Shade. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS). https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-20-0193.1
Ariane Middel, V. Kelly Turner, Florian A. Schneider, Yujia Zhang, Matthew Stiller. (2020). Solar reflective pavement – A policy panacea to heat mitigation? Environmental Research Letters, 15:064016. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab87d4
Ariane Middel, E. Scott Krayenhoff. (2019). Micrometeorological determinants of pedestrian thermal exposure during record-breaking heat in Tempe, Arizona: Introducing the MaRTy observational platform, Science of the Total Environment, 687:137–151. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.06.085
Ariane Middel, Nancy Selover, Björn Hagen, Nalini Chhetri. (2016). Impact of Shade on Outdoor Thermal Comfort – A Seasonal Field Study in Tempe, Arizona, International Journal of Biometeorology, 60(12):1849–1861. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-016-1172-5
More publications:
Kaylee Colter, Ariane Middel, Chris A. Martin. (2019). Effects of natural and artificial shade on human thermal comfort in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, Urban Forestry and Urban Greening, 44:126429. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2019.126429
Mehdi Aminipouri, David Rayner, Fredrik Lindberg, Sofia Thorsson, Anders Jensen Knudby, Kirsten Zickfeld, Ariane Middel, E. Scott Krayenhoff. (2019). Urban tree planting to maintain outdoor thermal comfort under climate change: The case of Vancouver’s local climate zones. Building and Environment, 158, 226–236. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2019.05.022
Key words: Remote sensing, Sustainability, Transdisciplinary, Urban shade
Learn more at:
CrossingCityLimits.com
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February ‘22
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