Um futuro confortável.

Abstract

The thermal sensation of elderly people in their home environment has not been explored much in Brazil. The studies developed have as object the thermal comfort of young people in school buildings, companies or in climatized chambers with control of the microclimatic variables. The ageing of the human body entails a number of physiological changes that impair the body›s thermal regulation mechanisms and exert a negative inluence over the individual›s thermal sensation. The extreme heat and cold may have an impact on the health of this population, who are exposed to aggravating risks of hyperthermia and dehydration. Our objective is to build a predictive model to determine the index of thermal sensation for the elderly (TSIEP) in a hot climate zone, taking into account their perception of weather variations in the city of Campina Grande city, situated in semiarid of Paraíba State, Brazil. For that purpose, an experimental study was carried out between April and December 2016 with 340 not bedridden, healthy people aged over 60 inside their homes. The results showed that 78% of the participants were female and 22% male; the age group between 60 and 70 years represented the largest number of participants, with 47% and, according to the results of the BMI, 57% of the participants are overweight. In the variable Degree of thermal sensationn, 64% of the participants chose the category «neither heat nor cold» to represent their state of thermal sensation. The responses of the sample units (elderly people) to thermal sensation categories (hot, comfortable and cold) were transformed in Probit estimations to elaborate thermal sensation graphs and determine thermal comfort parameters. Then, by applying the statistical technique of multivariate analysis (canonical correlation analysis) the thermal sensation index for elderly people (TSIEP) was determined. Finally, the TSIEP showed that the thermal sensation behavior of elderly people living in Campina Grande tends to be more sensitive to cold and less sensitive to heat.