Rediscovering the Urban Realm and Open Spaces (RUROS) project outdoor comfort database

The RUROS project aimed to produce an urban design tool to provide decision makers with the means for assessing the development of cities, targeting outdoor spaces in the urban context across Europe. More specifically it proposed models for evaluation of the microclimate of open spaces and the resulting thermal visual and audible comfort conditions for the people using these spaces; a methodology for developing comfort maps for the area, and design guidelines for the development of open spaces.

The open source data was originally published in 2004 on the website of the Centre for Renewable Energy Sources. When access to this lapsed the dataset was uploaded to 10.5281/zenodo.14275069 in December 2024.

This database includes all the raw data from extensive outdoor comfort surveys conducted across seven European cities (Athens (GR), Thessaloniki (GR), Milan (I), Fribourg (CH), Kassel (D), Cambridge (UK) and Sheffield (UK)), in between July 2001 and March 2002.

The files include the actual complete dataset and the codebook to explain each variable in the dataset.

The dataset incudes 9271 rows of data, each row representing a separate participant.