2011 Seventh International Conference on Natural Computation

Experimental design and the GA-BP Prediction of

Human Thermal Comfort Index
Ma Bingxin, Shu Jiong*, Wang Yanchao
Key Laboratory of Geographic Information Science, Ministry of Education,

East China Normal University,

Shanghai 200062, China

Abstract--- Fanger's PMV (Predicted Mean Vote) is an import index indoor and outdoor environment and chose different floors to
to evaluate human thermal comfort. Three AM-101s (thermal do observation. The result represents most of the residential
environment analyzer) were used to get outdoor and indoor sample areas. Importing experimental data to neural network model
data, and then built a prediction model between the six impact and using outdoor observation data as the training samples,
factors and PMV index with genetic algorithm and neural network. indoor observation data as test samples to train the network,
In this model the difficult iterative calculation was avoided. The we achieved satisfactory results.
results show that MSE converges to 10 ^ - 5 at the 68th epoch and
II THEORY OF THERMAL COMFORT
the overall errors are controlled in 0.006. The correlation coefficient
between PMV and the main three factors: temperature, humidity According to human body engineering and
and air velocity are respectively 0.839, 0.791and-0.932. The first microbiological theory, when the body’s heat loss and
two factors have a significant positive correlation and the third one metabolic heat production is equilibrious, we feel well
has a significantly negative correlation with PMV index. After daily otherwise it is uncomfortable. In stable condition, the
variation analysis of indoor and outdoor temperature, this paper put feelings of most human body are determined by six factors:
forward air conditioning control measures with manual interference (1) mean radiation temperature, (2) humidity, (3) air
to provide support to the occurrence of intelligent air conditioner. temperature, (4) air velocity, (5) metabolic rate, (6) clothing
thermal resistance. Fanger put forward the PMV index which
Key words: thermal comfort index PMV; BP neural network; is proved by the theory and practice and is widely used in
genetic algorithm; real-time control system; thermal many fields. It takes the heat exchange factors between
environmental analyzers human body and indoor environment into consideration.
PMV is the thermal feeling of most people to the same
I INTRODUCTION
environment and it has a numerical index to represent human
On the premise that human body is in a steady
thermal comfort. According to the thermal sensation votes, it
environment and metabolism is constant, human heat [2]
can be divided into seven comfort level ; the grading ruler
absorption is equal to the heat loss. In 1970, Fanger took
is in Table Ⅰ:
human thermal equilibrium equation as a starting point, got
TABLE1Ⅰ. Thermal sensation scale (PMV)
the evaluation index of human thermal comfort PMV
[1] Thermal cold cool Slightly moderate Slightly warm hot
(Predicted Mean Vote) . Many scholars studied in this field.
comfort cool warm
They used the simplified PMV model to predict thermal
comfort value and avoid complicated iteration calculation. PMV －３ －２ －１ ０ １ ２ ３
Although there is a high accuracy, the data is not measured Fanger’s thermal comfort equation:
and usually generated the variables randomly according to
PMV = (0.303e −0.036 M + 0.0275) × {M − W − 3.05[5.733 − 0.007( M − W ) − Pa ]
the data scopes. The PMV index, calculated base on these −0.42( M − W − 58.15) − 1.73 × 10−2 × M (5.867 − Pa ) − 0.0014 M (34 − ta )
data, can neither represent the real environment of human −3.96 × 10 −8 f cl [(tcl + 273) 4 − (t s + 273)4 ] − f cl hc (tcl − ta )}
thermal comfort nor correctly reflect the day changes of the tcl = 35.7 − 0.028( M − W ) − I cl {3.96 × 10 −8 f cl ×
body comfort. It reduces the reliability of prediction in a [(tcl + 273) 4 ] − (t s + 273) 4 ] + f cl hc (tcl − ta )}
certain extent. This paper utilized thermal environment
analyzer for field observation, considered the influence of the

Sponsored by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NO.40671176)

978-1-4244-9953-3/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE 771


1.00 + 1.290 I cl , I cl ≤ 0.078
f cl = {
1.05 + 0.645 I cl , I cl > 0.078
hc = 12.1× Va
Where M is body's metabolism rate (W /m2); W is human
activity (W /m2); Pa is the air vapor pressure around
people(Pa); ta is the air temperature ( ); ts is mean radiation
temperature; fcl is dressing surface coefficient which is
related to clothing thermal resistance; Icl is clothing thermal
resistance(m2·K/W); tcl is the surface temperature of
clothing( ); hc is surface heat transfer coefficient
(W/m2·K); va is air velocity (m/s) [3].
From the formula we can see that the calculation of tcl is
iterative, it is inconvenience to use formula directly to
calculate the PMV index. The BP neural network is to
simulate the way of thinking. Its characteristic is signal
transmission forward and error propagation backward. BP
algorithm in the training process is along the direction in
which the error function decreases the fastest to change the
weights and deviation. Its high parallelism and strong
fault-tolerance is very suitable for complicated nonlinear
calculation.
III DATA PREPARATION
A Experimental time and place the instruments
a) Experimental time: 2010 July 19-21 (totaling 48
hours), it can represents the typical summer conditions.
b) Instruments placement: Considering the PMV index in
different circumstances and the floors may affect the results
of the experiment; we choose a large residential area to place
the instruments in 7th floor and the 13th floor. Meanwhile
turning off the fans and air conditioners is necessary to
exclude human interference. We placed another instrument
on grass to represent the outdoor situation.
B Parameters setting and determination accuracy
a) Parameters Settings: PMV can be obtained through the
estimation of the metabolic rate, clothing thermal resistance,
air temperature, air velocity, air relative humidity and mean
radiation temperature. According to the experimental time
we set clothing thermal resistance to 0.5 (clo) (equivalent to
general summer clothing: knickers, thin trousers, short sleeve
open collar unlined upper garment, thinner socks and shoes),
energy metabolic equivalent is set to 1met(1met is slightly
higher than healthy adults’ basic metabolic, equivalent to the
metabolite rate of the adults while sitting quietly)[4].
(1)
b) AM - 101 (thermal environment analyzer) technical
parameters:
AM-101(Thermal Environment Analyze）can calculate
PMV (Predicted Mean Value) and PPD (Predicted
Percentage of Dissatisfied) index through the observation of
air temperature, air humidity, air velocity, mean radiant
temperature and other environmental factors.
Temperature: 0~50 ， Temperature of the black ball:
0~50 ， Mean radiation temperature: 0~50 ， Relative
humidity: 0~100%RH ，Air velocity: 0~5m/s ，PMV: -3~+3 ，
PPD: 0~100%.
Determination accuracy: temperature: ±0.5 (15~35 );
relative humidity: ± 3 % (20~80%RH); air velocity: ±0.1m/s
(0~1m/s), ±0.5m/s (1~5m/s) [5].Data was recorded every 10
minutes. Parts of the sample data as shown in Table Ⅱ:
IV MODEL
A Algorithm introduction
In recent years, the Artificial Neural network obtains
many scholars' attention; it is a computational model to
imitate the human brain and consists of a large number of
neurons and mutual weighted connections. For its powerful
learning function it is applied in many fields. The BP neural
network is the error back-propagation neural network; it is a
multi-layer mapping function with reverse transfer and could
correct the errors. Through the study of input and output
parameters in unknown system it can express the associative
[6]
memory system . Because the selection of BP network
weights and threshold is random each time, so initial values
are not the same and result is different each time. This paper
took the average of several network trainings to reduce the
influence by the random initial value and repeated the test
until achieved the goal [7].
Holland, a professor in the Michigan University of
American put forward GA (Genetic Algorithm) in 1962. The
algorithm mimics natural genetic mechanism and biological
evolution to generate a parallel random search optimization
method including selection, crossover and mutation. It brings
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 TABLE Ⅱ. Sample data

PMV PPD（%） Mean radiant Relative temperature(℃) Air

temperature(℃) humidity (%) velocity(m/s）
1．49 50．3 29．6 73．4 29．1 0．1
1．55 53．4 29．7 72．1 28．9 0．01
1．54 53．3 29．7 71．9 28．9 0．01
1．51 51．4 29．7 72 28．7 0．06
1．52 52．1 29．7 71．5 28．8 0．02
1．5 51．1 29．6 71．7 28．8 0．04
1．53 52．3 29．8 71．8 28．7 0．01

the mechanism, ‘survival of the fittest’ biological Net=newff (minmax (p), [6, 18, 1],
evolutionary theory into coding series groups to optimize {'tansig','tansig','purelin'}, 'trainlm'). (2)
parameters. According to the fitness function, selection,
crossover and mutation to retain good individual fitness Where minmax is normalized function; tansig and purelin
value and eliminate the individuals of poor fitness. The new are transfer functions; trainlm is training function.The BP
group inherits the information of last generation and is better neural network structure is shown in Fig.1:
than the last generation, its fitness value rise ceaselessly until
meet constraints [7].

Optimizing the weights and threshold of BP network is

the basic principle of genetic algorithm. Based on the
optimized BP network we can get a better prediction. Genetic
algorithm is a global search algorithm which compensates
the defects caused by the random selection in weights and
threshold. The integration of the BP neural network and
genetic algorithm gives full use of global search ability and
local search ability to get a better prediction.
B Algorithm Implementation
a) Data preprocessing: Including data filtration and
preprocessing. Data filtration is to remove the noise data
caused by human interference and the null data caused by the
rain; Preprocessing stage use mapminmax function to
normalize the sample data and make them fall into [-1, 1]
interval; use processpca function for each column data to do
principal component analysis so as to reduce the correlation
among the input samples [8].
Figure.1 Neural network structure
c) Select the preprocessed 600 groups of the outdoor
samples into the neural network; randomly select 100 groups
of the indoor sample data to test the model and output the
simulation results.
Net=train (net, p, t). (3)
Where p is input vector set; t is output vector set.
d) Use genetic algorithm to optimize the initialized
weights and thresholds of BP neural network and use the
new weights and thresholds to train the network. The fitness
function can expressed as:

b) Initialize the neural network: According to the study of the

PMV index, design a three layers BP neural network. The 1 1
f (X ) = =
(4)
n
SE
neuron number of the input and output layer respectively is ∑ (t
i =1
i − mi ) 2

6 and 1, the neuron number of the hidden layer is 18

according to Kolmogorovg’s empirical formula and after Where SE is variance; n is sample number; ti is sample
repeated experiments [9].
Use ‘newff’ function to generate value; mi is the sample average value.
the BP neural network: e) Output the simulation when the results meet the goal
and then analyze the results. The results are as follows:

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Figure.2 GA-BP neural network training error curve Figure.5 Comparison of prediction error

The results show: The MSE (Mean Square Error) of the

training converges to 10^-5 at 50 Epochs (Fig.2). The
predicted results of BP have a good agreement with the
expectations but there are several larger errors exist in the
curve (Fig.3). After the optimization of GA, we can see the
agreement between predicted values and expectation values
is better than prediction of BP (Fig.4).Apart from several
points, the overall error of BP prediction is controlled in
0.015; the error of GA-BP prediction is controlled in
0.005(Fig.5). It shows that the algorithm optimized the BP
neural network model and had a better predicted accuracy.
Figure.3 Prediction results of BP
outdoor
34 indoor
temperature(℃ )

32

30

28

26

21:00 3:00 9:00 15:00 21:00

time

Figure.6 Indoor and outdoor temperature contrast

32
temperature(℃ )

Figure.4 Prediction results of GA-BP

30

28

2
PMV

0
20:00 6:00 16:00 2:00 12:00 22:00

time
Figure.7 Temperature and PMV index comparison

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 Both the indoor and outdoor temperatures during one day
have a parabola shape (Fig.6). The peak occurs at about 14 [1]
o’clock and it is the peak of PMV index (Fig. 7). Through
partial correlation analysis of the measured data we can [2]
conclude: the correlation coefficient of the main three factors [3]
temperature, air velocity and humidity with PMV are
respectively 0.839, 0.791and-0.932. The first two factors [4]
have a significant positive correlation and the third has a
significantly negative correlation with PMV. Before 6am and
[5]
after 19pm the outdoor temperature is lower than the indoor
temperature that we can open the windows and doors to
[6]
control the indoor temperature; that we can choose to open
air conditioning to improve human thermal comfort in the
[7]
rest of the time. During the wet weather or the rainy day
reducing the humidity is necessary to control PMV in an [8]
appropriate range. These measures are profitable to our
[9]
health and will reduce the energy consumption to some
extent.
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V CONCLUSION
This paper presents a neural network combined with GA
(Genetic Algorithm) to predict Fanger’s thermal comfort
index PMV. We build a prediction model between the six
impact factors and PMV index and used the sample data to
train the network, and then utilize the genetic algorithm to
optimize the weights and threshold of the BP neural network
and take the new weights and threshold to train the neural
network and output the new results. By adjusting the
parameters of neural network the MSE converged to 10 ^ - 5
at 68 Epochs (Fig.2).The result shows optimized BP neural
network that the overall error is controlled in 0.006. It
illustrates Bp neural network’s high accuracy and feasibility
to predict PMV index. What’ more, according to the partial
correlation between PMV and its main impact factors, we can
select the optimal control measures to achieve the best
thermal comfort with the fastest speed so as to realize
real-time control of the air conditioner. It makes the
occurrence of the intelligent air conditioner possible.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This paper is partially supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (NO.40671176). The authors
also appreciate the editors and reviewers for their
constructive comments and suggestions on our paper.

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