Susan Roaf

Fergus Nicol

Hom Bahadur Rijal

This book brings together some of the finest academics in the field to address important questions around the way in which people experience their physical environments, including temperature, light, air-quality, acoustics and so forth. It is of importance not only to the comfort people feel indoors, but also the success of any building as an environment for its stated purpose. The way in which comfort is produced and perceived has a profound effect on the energy use of a building and its resilience to the increasing dangers posed by extreme weather events, and power outages caused by climate change. Research on thermal comfort is particularly important not only for the health and well-being of occupants but because energy used for temperature control is responsible for a large part of the total energy budget of the built environment. In recent years there has been an increasing focus on the vulnerabilities of the thermal comfort system; how and why are buildings failing to provide safe and agreeable thermal environments at an affordable price? Achieving comfort in buildings is a complex subject that involves physics, behaviour, physiology, energy conservation, climate change, and of course architecture and urban design. Bringing together the related disciplines in one volume lays strong, multi-disciplinary foundations for new research and design directions for resilient 21st century architecture. This book heralds workable solutions and emerging directions for key fields in building the resilience of households, organisations and populations in a heating world.

Routledge Handbook of Resilient Thermal Comfort

Tetsu Kubota

Hiroto Takaguchi

This book provides information on the latest research findings that are useful in the context of designing sustainable houses and living in rapidly growing Asian cities. The book is composed of seven parts, comprising a total of 50 chapters written by 53 authors from various countries, mainly in the Asian region. Part I introduces vernacular houses in different Asian countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Nepal, China, Thailand and Laos. Parts II and III then explore in depth indoor adaptive thermal comfort and occupants’ adaptive behavior, focusing especially on those in hot-humid climates. Part IV presents detailed survey results on household energy consumption in various tropical Asian cities, while Part V analyses the indoor thermal conditions in both traditional houses and modern houses in these countries. Several real-world sustainable housing practices in Asian cities are reviewed in the following part. The final part then discusses the vulnerability of expanding Asian cities to climate change and urban heat island. Today, approximately 35-40% of global energy is consumed in Asia, and this percentage is expected to rise further. Energy consumption has increased, particularly in the residential sector, in line with the rapid rise of the middle class. The majority of growing Asian cities are located in hot and humid climate regions, and as such there is an urgent need for designers to provide healthy and comfortable indoor environments that do not consume non-renewable energy or resources excessively. This book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in sustainable house design in the growing cities of Asia.

Hom Bahadur Rijal

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