building design principles for climate change adaptation...

Building Design Principles for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation: A Case Study of IIT Roorkee

Pankaj Kumar1, Repaul Kanji2 and Sonam Sahu3 1,2,3IIT Roorkee

E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Climate change is inevitable and thus there is an urgency to adapt the built environment to climate changes. It has been observed that there is a growing tendency to adapt to and accept new styles and forms of architecture without paying heed to the existing forms. The beautiful valley of Kashmir proudly houses two distinct styles of architecture; however the newer designs lack the existing touch. The point to ponder upon is that there must have been very specific reasons for the existence of a special style of architecture in that region and whatever modern designs we come up with, must always consult the existing, traditional ones. Vernacular architecture is designed to suit local climates and is a reflection of the customs and surrounding natural landscape of a community maintaining the three principles of firmitas, utilitas, venustas. Depending upon the climate, the topology and the surroundings designs have been practiced down the ages and now with the changing climate the age old designs must be re-used, modified accordingly. This paper highlights the importance of conventional and traditional designs with minute modifications discouraging the unnecessary adaption of urban styles and designs.

The study of different architectural forms belonging to the various regions in the country shows that each region has developed its own way of protecting itself from changes. For simplicity, the researchers have taken up a smaller field to study, the campus of IIT Roorkee. The objective of the paper would be to examine climate change within the campus. This is an ongoing process and it involves data collection from various points within the campus and around. The results would definitely show differences among various surveyed points. These differences would then help to analyze the basic changes in built environment that has actually played an important role to affect the temperature and hence the weather. More importantly, what changes in the vernacular architecture, building material, surroundings causes the temperature of the microcosm to rise. Thus, this study would be effective in suggesting ways of adapting to climate changes and also providing a better environment to live in Talking about resilience and mitigating efforts, the paper tries to give some generalized adaptation and mitigation methods also. The point of taking up smaller areas for study is to have a definite and practical approach towards the problem and finally come up with a generalized solution to fight the “perfect storm”.

Keywords: Urban Heat Island, Building Material Selection, AWS Based Local Data Collection, Weather Report Archiving

INTRODUCTION Vernacular architecture originated when human needed a simple, logical solution to his idiosyncratic problem. It derives its character from its locality and picks a fair hand on a number of subjects like anthropology, sociology,

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Building Design Principles for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation: A Case Study 31

psychology and history as well. This face of architecture is evident in the thought of local material utilization, spatial touch, language of form and architectural genre that the structure pursues. Moreover, it is not stagnant; it has been evolving; evolving with time, requirements, resources, issues, culture, and traditional concerns, a balance between past and present. There are a number of examples all over the world suggesting its paragon. On this matter, talking about our nation is not difficult. India has got a varied range of traditional and vernacular typologies scattered all over the country. Being such vast in topography, geography, culture and religion, India has a large record of indigenous typologies. There are illustrations where more than one form of architecture is celebrated and honored; there are also illustrations where a single form rules more than one region. For example, the Kat koni, Dhajji-dewari and Taq construction in Kashmir consisting of a conjunction of stone and timber as common materials differing in the material composition pertain to local issues of material availability, climate and disaster risks in the region. While Dhajji-Dewari and Kat-koni being apt to the mountainous terrains are used in Himachal Pradesh too. The use of oval shaped ‘bhungas’ of Rajasthan is seen in Gujarat too with a slight difference in nomenclature.

All these prospects of vernacular architectural style have been known and tested throughout the history, but still it is regretful to see how this is not being embraced for the sake of modern architecture. Modern architecture is based on codes and specifications; it is same for regions until there is a large variation in the topography and land property. On the other hand, the vernacular form of architecture is purely a result of local knowledge and experience. The excessive use of modern architecture and the blind march towards urbanization is also causing ruthless harms to our natural resources, environment and quality of nature. Moreover, these are not even proving beneficial to the nation in case of disasters. A recent example of it can be seen in the Uttarkashi disaster of July 2013, when a series of flood and probable seismic activity shook whole of the region, but it was the Kedarnath temple which is the only structure standing in the radius of 100 kms of devastation. Built thousands of years ago, the structure possess construction technology which no other modern building holds, given the decades of technology and the entire possible range of modern materials.

But it does not say that modern architecture is fully out of fit for use. The codal provisional architectural style do perform immensely well in the developed countries. But in a country like India, these specification based forms are yet to be made best use of. The reason might be our lack of technological perfection, inadequacy in implementation of codes and specifications or deficiency in material quality, although this is not the concern of this paper. We are interested to know the utilization of forms of architecture best suited to our present condition, transformation of vernacular to modern; how can this be dealt with while we are eventually reaching the zenith of urbanization.

32 Green India: Strategic Knowledge for Combating Climate Change: Prospects & Challenges

According to IPCC, the building industry alone contributes to 30% of total greenhouse gas emission in the world. The abnormal temperature variation occurring in the cities is responsible for temptation of even more use of heating and cooling devices, this furthermore is causing the dissolution of nature and natural renewable resources, again causing imbalances in nature. According to IPCC, USGCRP, EPA, there will be certain degree of climate change in the world soon, as much we mend our ways of using the natural resources. Urban Heat Island is a phenomenon exemplifying this issue of climate change in the cities. Climate change, UHI and other such similar parameters are a part of a vicious cycle that tends to somehow self-stabilize itself in the environment. To understand this, let us look at some interesting facts. The world is treading hastily towards development, advancement, globalization and urbanization. And, this essentially means industrial areas, business districts springing up amidst landscapes which were erstwhile greeneries. Now, in a country like India, the increased urbanization essentially leads to considerable increase of annual cooling loads for buildings and therefore raises urban energy consumption significantly. More the energy consumption more is the addition of green-house gases to the atmosphere. This directly results in green-house effect and temperature rise amongst other foul consequences. With the advancement in the world, the trend is to devise and design strategies which would lead to urbanization at the cost of energy consumption so as to make human life comfortable, hence adding more to the vicious circle. And thus the circle goes on. This issue ultimately resulting in climate change has been brought up via long processes through decades. Consequently it has to be dealt with in the same manner: on micro as well as macro level. The paper tries to find the solution of this asinorum in the profoundness of the traditional and vernacular architectural heritage that we hold in the form of passel of cultural data.

Taking a small site of IIT Roorkee as case study for the research, the paper tries to exemplify the undeniable advantages of vernacular architecture. The paper gives a demonstration of change in temperature which is reasoned because of undue parade towards modernization and urbanization. In order to examine the temperature variation in the tropics, existence of UHI has been proved by comparing the climate of two different kinds of settlements in and around Roorkee. And later the paper discusses the possible reasons of this change in the case of the college campus and probable ways of mitigation of the problem.

METHODOLOGY GENERAL

Urban Heat Island (UHI) is a phenomenon where the temperature in urban area becomes higher than those in the surrounding areas due to urbanization. The UHI phenomenon was first noticed by meteorologists more than a century ago (Howard, 1833). The stark difference in air temperature between the


urbanized areas and rural areas is what leads to the basis of UHI. Some of the factors which influence UHI effect include canyon geometry, thermal properties of materials, anthropogenic heat, the urban green-house effect and evaporation surfaces (Santamouris, 2002). According to Landsberg (1981), UHI, as the most obvious climatic manifestation of urbanization, can be observed in every town and city. In a way, UHI and climate change is a bi-directional proof; proving the existence of one invariably proves the existence of the other. This paper attempts to prove the existence of UHI and hence the irreversible effects of climate change using standard procedures explained in the sections to follow.

SELECTION CRITERIA

It would be apt to identify the reasons of taking up IIT Roorkee, Roorkee as the study area. The first and foremost reason would be the acquaintance with the area, surrounding and campus. Being one of the premiere institutes of India, IIT Roorkee is endowed with facilities that pretty much form the basis of any sort of research work. Roorkee is not a very urbanized and developed city and it owes all its fame, popularity, development, urbanization to IIT. Thus, the objective was to show the presence of UHI in such a city which is just at the verge of beginning a phase of development. It becomes quite trivial to claim that if a phenomenon like UHI, which is widely accepted, is proved to exist in a still developing city like Roorkee, how tremendous its affects would be in the metropolitan cities of India. Another reason of selecting IIT Roorkee as the study area was easy availability of rural areas in the surrounding. The surrounding suburbs are quite rural, which is ideal to show the existence of UHI in Roorkee. The last reason, but definitely not the least, was availability of IMD-AWS data. IIT Roorkee has AWS of its own and on top of that, availability of IMD data ensured proper results and conclusions. The other specific reason is the availability of different architectural typologies in a single campus. IIT Roorkee dates back to 1847, when it was known as the College of Civil Engineering and down the ages it has only developed and improved. It is thus obvious that this very campus boasts of different styles of architecture. Within this very campus one would come across bungalows with extensive greeneries around and also across multi-storied apartments. The campus has open public places as well as educational complexes. And it goes without saying that each style has its own influence on the micro-climate and in turn the surroundings. The variation in style, type and class of architecture eloquently displays the ever-going conflict between traditional and urban architecture which would perhaps add to the benefits of drawing a simple conclusion to a complex problem that involves so many different parameters like climate, surrounding, tree-cover, building material, building geometry etc.

PRINCIPLE AIM

The first proposed aim is to identify the change in climate by examining temperature variation and the existence of heat islands in a still developing city, Roorkee. Once, this point is proved, the paper tries to find the reason of


this climate change by focusing on its causes. The gradual slip from vernacular architecture to urbanization through use of modern materials, technology and interference to nature through anthropogenic activities in the campus is studied. Moving on to the last phase, after exhaustive data is collected about the various existing architectural forms, general mitigation measures are suggested, that lay emphasis on how to nullify or at least bring the environmental impacts to notch down.

METHODOLOGY

As the aim of this paper is three folds, the methodology is also likewise. The first phase is to establish the existence of UHI in Roorkee. For this, the air temperature of Roorkee needs to be compared with a rural area. The selected rural area is Dhanauri, 13 kilometres away from Roorkee. The first and foremost reason of selecting Dhanauri is that, not only it is a rural outfit but also its air temperature data is available with the Indian Meteorological Department. Specific days of two different months, rather two different seasons, of the year 2013 have been used for the comparison. Hourly data for the time stretch of 16th–25th April, 2013 and 20th–29th May, 2013 has been used for the analysis of UHI. The purpose of isolating selected days of these months is that April usually represents the spring season and May represents the summer season. Analyzing nine days, each of spring and summer season, when the temperatures are expected to be the most amiable and highest correspondingly, would provide proper basis to determine whether UHI exists in Roorkee or not.

Once this has been achieved, it’s the documentation of the various different architecture styles prevalent in the campus of IIT Roorkee that constitutes the second phase. Surveys are conducted across the campus to cover almost all the varied typologies so that the maximum possible variation of style and technique can be considered while drawing any conclusion related to UHI and hence climate change. More than ten sites have been covered during the survey, so that every possible location with the probability of even slightly affecting the micro-climate of the campus is included in the documentation. The documentation would be carried out based on certain parameters which generally contribute to UHI like building material, percentage built/open space, tree-cover, pollution, building geometry. This would be helpful in analyzing the causes, suggesting solutions by creating a balance between vernacular and modern and hence bring out some adaptation and mitigation methods to cope up with the ever changing climatic issues.

Fig. 1: Wind Speed in Summer Season


Fig. 2: (a)Temperature in Summer Season in Urban and Rural Site

Fig. 2: (b)Wind Speed in Spring Season

Fig. 3: Temperature in Spring Season in Urban and Rural Site

Fig. 4: Temperature Variation (Tu-r) in Summer Season

Fig. 5: Temperature Variation (Tu-r) in Spring Season


Table 1: Classification of Distinct Building Forms in Roorkee Campus Sr

. No.

Site

D

escr

ipti

on

Stru

ctur

e

Surr

ound

ings

Tree

cov

er

Pollu

tion

Build

ing

Hei

ght

Dis

tanc

e fr

om

near

est

build

ing

(app

rox)

Roug

hnes

s cl

ass1

% o

pen/

bu

ilt2

Cate

gory

Site 1 (KIH) Residential RCC Commercial/ Residential

Medium Medium 9 mtrs 8 mtrs 0.5 30–70 U

Site 2 (Lecture Hall Complex)

Educational RCC public/ Educational

Low High 20 mtrs 12 mtrs 1 20–80 U

Site 3 (Management Building)

Educational RCC Educational Low High 8 mtrs 12 mtrs 1 20–80 U

Site 4 (Hill View apartments)

Residential RCC Residential/ Educational


Site 5 (Shivalik Apartments)

Residential RCC Residential/ Educational


Site 6 (Architecture Department)

Educational RCC Educational Medium Medium 10 mtrs 25 mtrs 0.5 40–60 S

Site 7 (Nescafe)

Public RCC Commercial/Educational

Medium High 2.5 mtrs 8 mtrs 0.25 50–50 S

Site 8 (Faculty home)

Residential brick masonry

Residential High Low 3 mtrs 12 mtrs 0.25 40–60 S



Residential High Low 3 mtrs 22 mtrs 0.25 60–40 S



Educational High Medium 6 mtrs 12 mtrs 0.25 60–40 S

Site 11 (Main Building, IITR)

Administrative Building

brick masonry

Public/ Educational

Medium Low 8 mtrs 15 mtrs 0.5 40–60 S

Site 12 (Workers residences)

Residential sun dried bricks

Residential Medium Low 2.5 mtrs 3 mtrs 0.25 40–60 R

1-Roughness class allotted according to Table 2 2-Average percentage of ground covered with impermeable material to permeable material U-Urban S-Suburban R-Rural

Table 2: Classification of Effective Terrain Roughness (Revised 2000) Source: Davenport et al. (2000) in Oke (2006)

Class Z (m) Landscape Description Roughly Open

0.10 Moderately open country with occasional obstacles (e.g., isolated low buildings or trees) at relative horizontal separations of at least 20 obstacle heights

Rough 0.25 Scattered obstacles (buildings) at relative distances of 8 to 12 obstacle heights for low solid objects (e.g., buildings)

Very Rough 0.5 Area moderately covered by low buildings at relative separations of 3 to 7 obstacle heights and no high trees

Skimming 1.0 Densely built-up area without much building height variation Chaotic 2.0 City centre with mix of low and high-rise buildings


RESULTS AND DISCUSSION From the documentation of different areas of campus, it was seen that the building constructed in the recent times lack the touch of vernacular architecture, but there are also structures which do show their ethnic belonging to the region. After collecting the primary data from a number of sites, it has been sorted in a particular format and jotted down in Table 1. It can be seen that in the 12 sites covered, there is a mix of locations that can be categorized as urban, suburban and rural.

The categorization done here is on the basis of the material used in the structure and percentage of surface transformation because of human intervention and the roughness class according to the Davenport Classification of Roughness Class. The analysis is discussed in the following sections. The graphs above (Fig. 1, 2, 3 and 4) are showing the weather profile of the two selected locations Roorkee and Dhanauri (urban and rural respectively). Figures 5 and 6 show the temperature variation (Tu-r) in summer and spring seasons. There is at most around 3.5 degrees variation in the temperature from the nearby rural area in the summer season ranging from 0.1 to 3.5 degrees, and about 3.8 degrees in the springs ranging from 0.2 to3.8 degrees. A difference in architecture and construction style of the building in the campus is also noted. It can be concluded that this change in temperature range in the two locations is due to the gradual movement towards urbanization. Most of the buildings built in the last few years are examples of modern construction methods and materials.

The sites 2, 3, 4 and 5 shown in Fig. 8, 9, 10 and 11 respectively are recently built structures and which are profusely modern mainly because these are designed not according to the existing climate, but for artificial heating and cooling, for human comfort. These buildings lack intimacy with the environment. The percentage of green area or open area is very less. The structures witnesses 80% transformed surfaces. The extensive use of asphalt road, concrete roads, concrete and glass on building skin is responsible for increasing the temperature in the micro level increasing the demand of heating and cooling devices which ultimately is affecting the integrated weather condition of the city as a whole. The absence of tree cover further adds to the issues of heat gain as there is no evapo-transpiration possible. Absence of permeable surface hampers the humidity level of the area, allows more solar radiation to get absorbed, and reduces the expected precipitation. For Site 1 (Fig 7), the construction style is certainly modern but there, a considerable amount of land is either open or has some foliage. This is a factor liberal enough to hold back environmental impacts to a certain extent. This makes the site distinct in character from the other sites categorized as modern.

On the other hand there are other sites which show highly distinguishable lineament. Site 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 are suburban. Out of these, the Site 6 and 7 (Fig. 12 and 13) are built up of RCC, but the percentage of human intervention in changing the character of land is appreciably less. The softscape is mostly natural and undisturbed. The play of nature has not been interfered with; it has


been kept safe and untouched. All what has been done is the addition of few gathering spaces for utilization and leisure. So there has been least intervention in the natural setup. Next are the sites 8, 9 and 10. These are typical examples of vernacular in Roorkee. Fig. 14, 15 and 16 shows assemblage of the brilliantly designed arrangement of the built and open spaces. The structure built up of brick masonry holds a belonging to locale. These buildings have brick masonry structure and slab made up of layers of tiles plastered with lime mortar. This thoughtful system of planning and design holds the essential weather factors under assurance, being designed for the local climate; no artificial cooling required. The other location is the site 11 (Fig. 17) is the main building of IIT Roorkee. The structure made up of brick masonry holds a magnificent look and does not need any high order modern material range. With a noticeable part belonging to green spaces the structure has very little harm to make to the climate of the region even though it has a huge amount of ground coverage. The thick brick walls and the slab made up of reinforced brickwork with lime surkhi mortar are good for high insulation and low heat gain are responsible for less energy consumption for cooling the interiors. Site 12 (Fig. 18) is a residential area, a part of campus belonging to the lower income group. The buildings are made up of sun dried bricks. The space is categorized as rural because of the material used for construction and the untouched surroundings.

Table 2: Thermal Conductivity of Some Common Building Materials

Materials Thermal Conductivity-k-W/(m.K) Aluminium 205 Aluminium Brass 121 Aesbestos-cement board 0.744 Aesbestos-cement sheet 0.166 Aesbestos-cement 2.07 Asphalt 0.75 Bitumen 0.17 Brass 109 Brick dense 1.31 Brick, insulating 0.15 Brickwork, dense 1.6 Cement, Portland 0.29 Cement mortar 1.73 Clay, dry to moist 0.15–1.8 Concrete, lightweight 0.1–0.3 Concrete, medium 0.4–0.7 Concrete, dense 1.0–1.8 Concrete, stone 1.7 Earth, dry 1.5 Fibreglass 0.04 Glass 1.05 Granite 1.7–4.0 Gravel 0.7 Limestone 1.26–1.33 Marble 2.08–2.94 Plywood 0.13 Wood 0.07–0.15

Source: ASHRAE Handbook of Fundamentals, Chapter 24. (1 W/(m.K) = 1 W/(m.oC) = 0.85984 kcal/(hr.m.oC) = 0.5779 Btu/(ft.hr.oF))


Fig. 7: Site 1—KIH Fig. 8: Site 2—Lecture Hall Complex

Fig. 9: Site 3—Management Building Fig. 10: Site 4—Hillview Apartment

Fig. 11: Site 5—Shivalik Apartment Fig. 12: Site 6—Architecture Department

Fig. 13: Site 7—Nescafe Fig. 14: Site 8—Faculty Home


Fig. 15: Site 9—Faculty Home Fig. 16: Site 10—Faculty Home

Fig. 17: Site 11—Main Building IITR Fig. 18: Site 12—Worker’s Residence

The above results conforming the presence of temperature variations and heat islands in the city and the gradual move towards urbanization brings forward the whole scenario of cause of climate change in Roorkee; henceforth acknowledging the importance of adapting and mitigating to the problems.

CONCLUSION

GENERAL

The use of modern material, modern construction techniques in the newer buildings in the campus has caused undue surface transformation. Such anthropogenic activities are some visible differences in vernacular and modern architecture. Excessive use of building materials with undesirable thermal properties such as concrete, glass and asphalt cause the ambient temperature of the built environment to rise and eventually contribute maximum amount of green house gases to the atmosphere. It is notable that not only in the process of their usage in the building, in fact the whole process of extraction, manufacturing, transportation and construction as well as demolition of these materials involves high amounts of CO2. The high rise apartments use heavy machinery in their construction process instead of using local manpower which is another flaw hampering the environment. There are buildings which have


been intentionally designed with the tendency of creating artificial indoor environment for human comfort with HVAC systems. These are artificially cooled and ventilated structures. While the faculty residences which are single storey structures are designed for local weather and do not need artificial indoor climatic comfort. These structures maintain comfortable indoor temperature under normal conditions. Abundant natural softscape present in these structures is another factor which ties them to their locality.

All these factors direct us to the simple conclusion of using indigenous materials, manpower and technology. The structure should be designed taking into consideration the character of the locality. The natural setup should be least interfered with and the percentage of impermeable surfaces should be kept to the lowest limit possible. Local weather conditions should be kept in mind while designing and the use of artificial cooling / heating and ventilation should be kept to the bare minimum.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Table 2 gives the list of some common building materials and their thermal conductivity. It is advisable to make use of materials with low U-value, high reflectivity, low thermal conductivity and high evaporative efficiency. It is important to note that thermal conductivity is a function of material density. Hence building materials with lower density are recommended for use. Color value also affects the amount of heat captured. According to EPA Cool Pavement Report (2005) and Steffen (2008), the use of light colored, low density concrete reflects 50% more heat radiations and reduces ambient temperature. Section 3.3 of Education of Architects in Solar Energy and Environment suggest that materials like wood, recycled paper and adobe used in various forms are not only extracted from renewable resources but also have lower environmental impact. CORRIM recognizes wood as a renewable industrial material which contributes 50% less CO2 than steel and 88% less than concrete. Flyash is a fine aggregate which is much more environment friendly than cement. It can replace 50% portland cement in concrete, reducing density and thermal conductivity. Cement alone contributes to 5% GHG to the environment. Promoting the use of flyash concrete and flyash brick blocks in place of conventional building materials can reduce the energy demand of the structure, thus reducing their carbon footprint.


In this context the important strategies that can be listed to ensure the least impact on the climate can be:

Innovation in technology and construction process. Identifying materials with low carbon footprints and improved thermal

properties. Using indigenous materials, and manpower instead of heavy machinery Designing and planning for local weather conditions using passive solar

design features instead of creating artificial indoor climate and using HVAC.

Reducing anthropogenic activities and artificial surface transformation to minimum.

With these schemes, understanding of vernacular technologies and knowledge of material science, it can be possible to build an integrated and successful environment conscious design for the city which will portray its connectivity to the locale, ties with the history & culture and be a solution for the climatic changes to come in the near future.

CAVEATS

The study has been carried on with focus on climate change and its perspectives. The researchers’ basic knowledge and ability to pursue the work, understanding the need of the study, has been the base of the outcome. And consequently, the study is a result of review of the authors only and does not have any other reviewer. The study has been performed with a limited time data and resources. The case study taken has a small area under consideration. This can be marked as the most striking limitation of our study, as the researches under this particular field is vast and requires a larger dataset and knowledge. The case study we chose as per convenience might not have provided the best possible results. The researchers have tried to be just and careful with the study to reduce the ambiguity to the least possible measure. The study of building forms and further categorization has been done with the help of a number of studies already referred appropriately wherever needed, and the strategy for examining the climate change has been adapted from a number of references cited above. Thus, the study involves combination of various different revered works and hence promises to be a unique one in its own way.


REFERENCES [1] (2009). Cool Pavement Report. EPA. [2] CORRIM. (n.d.). Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials. [3] (n.d.). Environmental impact of building materials: Education of Architects in Solar Energy and

Environment. Retrieved from www-cenerg.ensmp.fr_ease_sustain_pdf_sa0102 [4] EPA. (n.d.). U.S. Environment Protection Agency. [5] Gore, A., & Steffen, A. (2008). World Changing: A User's Guide for the 21st Century. New York. [6] Handbook of Fundamentals. (1997). ASHRAE. [7] IPCC. (2007). Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [8] Oke. (2006). Initial Guidance to Obtain Representative Meteorological Observations at Urban Sites.

World Meteorological Organization: Instruments and Observing Methods Report no. 81. [9] USGCRP. (n.d.). U.S. Global Research Program.

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