Estimating Terrestrial Radiation for Human Thermal Comfort in Outdoor Urban Space

Cities inadvertently create warmer and drier urban climate conditions than their surrounding areas through urbanization that replaces natural surfaces with impervious materials. These changes cause heat-related health problems and many studies suggest microclimatic urban design (MUD) as an approach to address these problems. In MUD-related research, although terrestrial radiation plays an important role in human thermal comfort and previous studies use thermal comfort models to identify human heat stress, few studies have addressed the effect of terrestrial radiation. This study develops the ground ratio factor (GRF) model to estimate the different terrestrial radiation according to different ground conditions. Three types of ground materials (asphalt, concrete, and grass) were considered in the model, and field studies were conducted in humid subtropical climate (Cfa) zone during the hot season (13 July to 19 September 2020). The model was validated by comparing the predicated terrestrial radiation (PTR) from the model with the actual terrestrial radiation (ATR). The results showed that there is a statistically significant strong correlation between PTR and ATR. The model can contribute to MUD strategies by updating existing human energy budget models, which can lead to the measurement of more accurate human thermal comfort for mitigating thermal environments.

External Dependence of the African Franc CFA zone. Empirical Investigations on Money Supply Process

The objective of this paper is to study the operating mechanisms of the issuing institutions in CFA area and the different sources of money creation. Our approach consists in studying, respectively the automatic or discretionary nature of monetary policies, through the establishment of non-neutralization/non-sterilization monetary indices (index); and in a second step we test, using co-integration models, the evolution of monetary base in relation of Net External Asset (NFA) and in relation to the evolution of Net Domestic Assets. Our results mainly indicate the existence of a preponderance of the external sector or NFA over the evolution of the monetary base or money supply, compared to the domestic sector. In addition, we observe an automatic adjustment in both WAEMU and CEMAC over the long term. But the return to equilibrium is slower in WAEMU due to a mix of automation and discretion. On the other hand, in CEMAC, the return to equilibrium is almost automatic with a strong dependence on the external sector.