Selected Papers from 2015 TAU Conference on Mitigating the Built Environments for Climate Change
A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Building Energy, Physics, Environment, and Systems".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 June 2015) | Viewed by 43709
Special Issue Editor
Interests: thermal comfort; low energy building; tropical architecture; green architecture; sustainable built environment; low carbon town; human behavior and carbon emissions
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
This Special Issue of Buildings is a publication of selected papers presented at the 2015 TAU International Conference on “Mitigating and adapting built environments for climate change in the tropics”, held at the Tanri Abeng University (TAU), Jakarta, Indonesia, on 30 and 31 March 2015. The topic emerges as a matter of concern towards the present development of developing countries, such as Indonesia, to improve the nation’s wellbeing. In developing countries, improving the nation’s wellbeing would need a massive development of their built environments. The massive development has triggered the use of fossil fuel and other of Earth’s resources, emitting huge amounts of carbon dioxide and creating global warming and climate change. Unless appropriate actions are taken, the ongoing process of development in some parts of the world, particularly in some tropical developing countries like Indonesia, will enhance climate change, threatening the lives of future generations.
The conference was organized jointly by the School of Architecture, Tanri Abeng University, Indonesia, London Metropolitan University, UK, and Herriot Watt University, UK, aiming to gather information and share ideas from researchers, building scientists, architects, building engineers, urban designers, lectures, students, etc., regarding to the current problems of the built environment due to climate change. The identification of the current problems of the built environment would be of importance in order to find a way to overcome these problems. It is expected that, from the conference, some ideas and strategies would come up regarding how to mitigate and to adapt our built environment for climate change.
Articles in this Special Issue cover a range of various discussions. The need to establish an appropriate thermal comfort standard, in a particular country and in particular location with a particular climate, is still an interesting area, which has been discussed in this issue. The appropriate comfort standard expectedly would provide a better thermal environment and, at the same time, minimizing the use of energy for cooling. Some current comfort standards are suggesting indoor temperatures in a tropical climate that are too low, encouraging people to use more energy for cooling purposes, while, at the same time, building occupants suffer from being uncomfortably cool.
A number of articles discuss the way to reduce cooling energy in tropical buildings by means of passive design and also by minimizing the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect in urban areas. Buildings are to be designed in such a way that solar heat gain is minimized, thus, low indoor temperature can be achieved with minimum help from air conditioners or fans. On the other hand, minimizing the UHI effect in surrounding buildings, by means of planting vegetation, would reduce the air temperature of the surrounding environment of the buildings. Having low outdoor temperatures in a tropical climate would help buildings to have low indoor temperature without depending too much on air conditioners, thus, minimizing the use of energy and reducing the carbon emissions. Another paper in this Special Issue is dealing with the way to reduce the consumption of Earth resources in ecotourism facilities. Reducing the consumption of Earth resources would directly reduce the ecological footprint levels of people and the region, and would help to maintain the sustainability of the built environment.
Prof. Dr. Tri Harso Karyono
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- building
- built environment
- carbon dioxide
- climate change
- earth’s resources
- energy consumption
- housing
