What is the relationship between humidity and comfort at high temperatures? In search of new ways of looking at the issue

This draft paper was developed as a stalking horse for the Windsor 2014 Conference workshop on Statistics, It presents the results of summer time field work undertaken by Abdulrahman Alsheikh in the region of Damman, Saudi Arabia and the data collected shows that middle class homes families there occasionally report thermal neutrality at very high temperatures and humidities. The issues surrounding the collection, analysis and understanding of the complex issues around the relationship between humidity and comfort at high temperatures has long been a difficult one and the paper sets out some general back ground, presents the preliminary findings from the Dammam field work and then raises some questions that we hope the expert statisticians running the workshop can help us make sense of, with a view to publishing a full paper subsequently including the results of the workshop deliberations.