A comfort field study in public transportation buses.

The initial findings of a project initiated in the University of Coimbra and dealing with the conjugated influence of multiple stressors in riding passengers are presented in this paper. A field study in public transportation buses was conducted, having been the subjective responses of the occupants collected and the physical parameters related to the thermal comfort, noise, vibration and air quality acquired. In the questionnaires, the PMV scale was used to evaluate the thermal aspects and, for the other stressors, a five-point scale, from very uncomfortable to very comfortable, was used. The results of the statistic treatment of data, including the correlations between the indices resulting from the measured physical parameters and the subjective responses are presented. Even if it looks too far, the final goal of the project is to obtain a general comfort index that takes into account the influence of multiple stressors.