About the Book
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.
Table of Contents:
Part I New approaches to comfort, occupants and resilience 1. The shapes of comfort and resilience Fergus Nicol 2. Rethinking resilient thermal comfort within the context of human-building resilience Marcel Schweiker 3. Why occupants need a role in building operation: A framework for resilient design Lisa Heschong and Julia Day Part II Climate change and comfort 4. The impact of future UK heatwave to the thermal resilience in office and residential buildings – A comparison Asif Din and Hala El Khorazaty 5. Resilient design in extreme climates: 5-steps overheating assessment method for naturally ventilated buildings Daniel Zepeda-Rivas, Jorge Rodríguez-Álvarez and José Roberto García-Chávez Part III Sleep and comfort for the old and the young 6. Summertime indoor temperatures and thermal comfort in nursing care homes in London Rajat Gupta and Alastair Howard 7. Assessing human resilience: A study of thermal comfort, wellbeing and health of older people Terence Williamson, Veronica Soebarto, Helen Bennetts, Larissa Arakawa Martins, Dino Pisaniello, Alana Hansen, Renuka Visvanathan, Andrew Carre and Joost van Hoof 8. Do children feel warmer than adults? Overheating prevention in schools in the face of climate change Marije te Kulve, Runa T. Hellwig, Froukje van Dijken and Atze Boerstra 9. Causes and effects of partial cooling during sleep Noriko Umemiya and Yuhan Chen Part IV Resilient design for buildings and cities 10. Overheating and passive cooling strategies in low-income residential buildings in Abuja, Nigeria Michael U. Adaji, Timothy O. Adekunle and Richard Watkins 11. The devolution of thermal resilience in residential houses in Khartoum Huda Z.T. Elsherif, Marialena Nikolopoulou and Henrik Schoenefeldt 12. Design of adaptive opportunities for people in buildings Runa T. Hellwig, Despoina Teli, Marcel Schweiker, Joon-Ho Choi, M.C. Jeffrey Lee, Rodrigo Mora, Rajan Rawal, Zhaojun Wang and Farah Al-Atrash 13. Resiliency lessons of traditional living in nomadic yurts Dolaana Khovalyg 14. Passive cooling strategies for low carbon architecture Pablo La Roche 15. Passive design for extreme heat: The Austrian pavilion at EXPO 2020 in Dubai Georgios Gourlis and Peter Holzer 16. Studying outdoor thermal comfort and resilience in an urban design perspective: A case study in Ipoh old town and new town, Malaysia Mei-Yee Teoh, Michihiko Shinozaki, Kei Saito and Ismail Said Part V Resilience and comfort in offices 17. Adaptive approaches to enhancing resilient thermal comfort in Japanese offices Hom B. Rijal, Michael A. Humphreys and J. Fergus Nicol 18. Thermal comfort and occupant disposition in mixed-mode offices in a Brazilian subtropical climate Ricardo Forgiarini Rupp, Jørn Toftum and Enedir Ghisi 19. Tools and rules for behavioural agency in buildings: Minimising energy use while maintaining comfort Julia K. Day 20. Mixed mode is better than air conditioned offices for resilient comfort: Adaptive behaviour and visual thermal landscaping Sally Shahzad and Hom B Rijal 21. Effects of light and ambient temperature on visual and thermal appraisals Maaike Kompier, Karin Smolders and Yvonne de Kort 22. Reaching thermal comfort zone limits for resilient building operation: A winter case study for offices Dolaana Khovalyg, Verena M. Barthelmes and Arnab Chatterjee Part VI Indoor environmental quality, energy and life cycle analysis 23. Methodology of IEQ assessment in energy efficient buildings Karel Kabele, Zuzana Veverková and Miroslav Urban 24. Flexible future comfort Sanober Hassan Khattak, Andrew Wright and Sukumar Natarajan 25. Sight beyond reach: Dynamic life cycle assessment to support resilient retrofit decision-making in a changing climate Vanessa Gomes, Marcella R. M. Saade, Leticia O. Neves, Iris Loche, Lizzie M. Pulgrossi and Maristela G. Silva 26. Indoor environmental quality, energy-efficiency and thermal comfort in the retrofitting of housing: A literature review Marco Ortiz and Philomena M. Bluyssen Part VII The role of ventilation and radiation in cooling and heating 27. Double skin buildings and resilience for commercial buildings Eusébio Conceição, João Gomes, Ma Inês Conceição, Ma Manuela Lúcio and Hazim Awbi 28. Cooling with thermally activated, radiative surfaces: Resilient answers to upcoming cooling needs, extending the application range of adaptive comfort Peter Holzer and David Stuckey 29. Rethinking radiant comfort Eric Teitelbaum and Forrest Meggers Part VIII National databases and comfort education 30. Towards resilient cooling possibilities for Brazilians’ hot and humid climates: Exploring the national thermal comfort database Carolina Buonocore, Renata De Vecchi, Greici Ramos, Maira Andre, Christhina Candido and Roberto Lamberts 31. Teaching comfort: Critical approaches, digital interventions and contemporary choices Ola Uduku, B K Satish, Gillian Treacy and Yiqianq Zhao Part IX COVID-19: transmission and trust 32. How airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 confirmed the need for new ways of proper ventilation Philomena M. Bluyssen 33. COVID-19: Trust, windows and the psychology of resilience Susan Roaf Part X The past, and future of comfort standards 34. Resilient comfort standards Susan Roaf and Fergus Nicol Index
About the Author :
Fergus Nicol is an award winning leader in the field of adaptive thermal comfort, having started as a physicist at the Building Research Establishment in the 1960s. He moved on to work with the UK Medical Research Council, and into teaching, before leaving both to start the radical book shop Bookmarks. Returning to research in 1992, he is now an Emeritus Professor in a number of universities, and a top cited scholar across his many publications. He led influential pan-European and Pakistan studies on comfort and he leads the NCEUB, Network for Comfort and Energy use in Buildings. He co-founded and ran the Windsor Conferences on comfort and is internationally respected for his support of fellow researchers and students.
Hom Bahadur Rijal is an award winning researcher, author and Professor at Tokyo City University, Japan, specialising in adaptive thermal comfort and occupant behaviour within buildings having published over 80 journal papers, 12 book chapters and co-edited books. Growing up in a remote village in Nepal where he remains a valued social activist, he studied higher education in Japan and worked in England. He is currently embarked on a Japan-wide project to establish the adaptive thermal comfort limits for major cities across Japan. In 2005 he received the Encouragement Prize for a distinguished article from the Architectural Institute of Japan.
Susan Roaf is Emeritus Professor of Architectural Engineering at Heriot Watt University. Raised in Malaysia and the Australian bush, and educated in Britain, she has lived and worked as an architect, anthropologist and archaeologist in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, California and Antarctica, experiences that colour her unique understanding of buildings and comfort in different climates and cultures and inspired her work on adapting buildings and cities to a heating world. She pioneered UK building integrated solar technologies and eco-design, and with Nicol and Humphreys has promoted adaptive thermal comfort globally. Her expertise in ancient technologies informed some of her 23 books and other publications, all aimed at understanding building performance in the past, present and future.
Review :
"The comprehensive body of research that the editors have complied in the Handbook of Resilient Thermal Comfort collectively provides a wealth of constructive insights and lessons for the design of more resilient buildings. It justifies the importance of supporting greater inhabitant agency. Although these represent the central focus, this volume points to a much broader perspective on the roles and responsibilities of building design professionals and therefore provides them with a valuable resource. As a handbook, they may selectively review those chapters of more direct relevance to their interests. The electronic version, and its attendant search capability, is particularly useful for this." - Ray Cole, Professor University of British Columbia, Canada, reviewing in Buildings & Cities
"This is a very rich and engaging monograph on resilient comfort, which integrates the research achievement of researchers from many countries over a long period of time and is what makes it so valuable. I would highly recommend this book to Chinese researchers and students studying adaptive thermal comfort." – Yingxin Zhu, Professor Tsinghua University, China
"In an age of climate change, we need to re-examine how we build. Resilient Comfort will add immeasurably to our understanding of how to design for safe conditions in buildings during temperature extremes and power outages." – Alex Wilson, Resilient Design Institute, New York, USA
"The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to consider the airborne transmission of viruses as never before. Ventilation of enclosed spaces must be revolutionised - dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Just when most needed, this book highlights the nuances of indoor ventilation, balanced against thermal comfort, energy costs and building resilience." – Stephanie Dancer, Consultant Microbiologist, Lanarkshire, Scotland
"I am confident that this book will provide a vital contribution to the development of a carbon neutral society, and provide new thinking about healthier building design after the COVID-19 crisis. The philosophy of this book is that ‘Human Adaptive Behaviour’ will help to solve these problems." – Shin-Ichi Tanabe, President of the Architectural Institute of Japan
"There is a wealth of knowledge in these pages! More vast than a single conference proceeding, this is an impressive compilation of global voices sharing their collective research wisdom spanning yurts to high-tech offices, passive to active systems, and offering valuable lessons learned for more resilient building design and policy." – Gail Brager, University of California, Berkeley, USA
"In a research domain crowded with countless engineering and architecture meetings each year, the Windsor Comfort Conferences were unique in their positioning of the occupant at the very centre of the built environment. Unfortunately, the grand finale of that celebrated series was abruptly cancelled when the UK Prime Minister officially declared the COVID-19 pandemic, literally just days before the opening speeches were scheduled in Windsor in April 2020. This volume contains a distillation of the latest occupant-centric comfort research from around the world. With established thought leaders and young research innovators alike, the volume’s list of contributors represents a veritable who’s who of thermal comfort researchers at a point in history when the subject of their enquiries is more significant and consequential than ever before." – Richard de Dear, University of Sydney, Australia
"The great Samuel Johnson once said 'to be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends.' In my experience that requires being neither too hot nor too cold, and this book is full of thoughts on how to accomplish that while simultaneously keeping the planet from overheating. It's of great value!" – Bill McKibben, Founder of the Climate Campaign Group 350.org
