Thermal comfort standards in the Middle East: Current and future challenges

Elnaklah, Rana; Alnuaimi, Abdulla; Alotaibi, Badr S.; Topriska, Evangelia Vasiliki; Walker, Ian; Natarajan, Sukumar

doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2021.107899

Cited by 36 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Yet, paradoxically, indoor temperatures in US offices have been shown to be lower in summer than winter 8 . Similar overcooling practices have been reported in tropical climates throughout Asia 9 , 10 and the Middle East 11 , and are forecast to increase in the future 1 . The cause of overcooling is often attributed to two broad issues.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 72%

Overcooling of offices reveals gender inequity in thermal comfort

Parkinson

Schiavon

Dear

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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Growth in energy use for indoor cooling tripled between 1990 and 2016 to outpace any other end use in buildings. Part of this energy demand is wasted on excessive cooling of offices, a practice known as overcooling. Overcooling has been attributed to poorly designed or managed air-conditioning systems with thermostats that are often set below recommended comfort temperatures. Prior research has reported lower thermal comfort for women in office buildings, but there is insufficient evidence to explain the reasons for this disparity. We use two large and independent datasets from US buildings to show that office temperatures are less comfortable for women largely due to overcooling. Survey responses show that uncomfortable temperatures are more likely to be cold than hot regardless of season. Crowdsourced data suggests that overcooling is a common problem in warm weather in offices across the US. The associated impacts of this pervasive overcooling on well-being and performance are borne predominantly by women. The problem is likely to increase in the future due to growing demand for cooling in increasingly extreme climates. There is a need to rethink the approach to air-conditioning office buildings in light of this gender inequity caused by overcooling.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 72%

Overcooling of offices reveals gender inequity in thermal comfort

Parkinson

Schiavon

Dear

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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“…EnergyPlus software has strong links with four other tools, namely CBE, DesignBuilder and IDA-ICE, and MATLAB © . Al-Absi et al, 2021;Aliakbari, Ebrahimi-Moghadam and Ildarabadi, 2021;Conejo-Fernández, Cappelletti and Gasparella, 2021a;Elnaklah et al, 2021;Elshafei et al, 2021;Ghaderian and Veysi, 2021a;Goudarzi et al, 2021;Hagentoft and Pallin, 2021;Halhoul Merabet et al, 2021;Heibati, Maref and Saber, 2021a;K. Qu et al, 2021;Kükrer and Eskin, 2021a;Mabdeh, Radaideh and Hiyari, 2021;Nie et al, 2021;Rangaswamy and Ramamurthy, 2021;Saif et al, 2021a;Yılmaz and Yılmaz, 2021;Y.…”

Section: Softwarementioning

confidence: 99%

Thermal Comfort in Buildings: Scientometric Analysis and Systematic Review

et al. 2023

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The building sector is one of the most resource-exhausting areas in global energy consumption. Maintaining good thermal comfort for occupants is the leading energy demand in buildings. The primary purpose of the current study is to identify the development of research areas on occupant comfort, pinpoint the gaps in knowledge and recommend directions for future studies. A scientometric analysis and a comprehensive systematic literature review are conducted using 792 sources. It is evident from the exponential increase in published papers that scholars are highly interested in this research topic. However, discrepancies remain between the two fundamental models of evaluating thermal comfort. There is a pressing need to balance thermal comfort while increasing energy efficiency. The foundation of achieving this balance can only be done by correctly evaluating the surrounding environment of occupants and understanding all the factors influencing human thermal comfort conditions. There is also a high potential in employing industry 4.0 technologies to assist in designing more innovative solutions for thermal comfort. Furthermore, there is a need for local thermal standards targeting specific regions. The lack of interoperability between BIM 3D modelling and energy simulation tools remains an obstacle.

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“…Yet the detail of these variations is often either difficult to discern or downplayed in research. This is partly because of the popularity of quantitative surveys that aim to reveal the ambient temperature preferences of those found in different parts of the world (for a recent review, see de Dear et al 2020; for work in the Middle East, see Elnaklah et al 2021). These studies provide valuable evidence if the ambition is to give architects and building managers the confidence to respond more fully to how people possess different preferences partly by virtue of their history of exposure to very different local climates.…”

Section: Qualitative Research On Climate-controlled Livesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In so doing, air-conditioning appealed as the 'ultimate technical fix' (Günel 2019) in response to the challenge of creating a modern city in the desert as various developments started encasing people in buildings that were surrounded by mirrored glass and fully air-conditioned inside (Indraganti & Boussaa 2017a). This appeal was also especially strong in a country where the gas exports made cost of comparatively little concern (Elnaklah et al 2021). Since then there have been various attempts to unsettle the local reliance on air-conditioning through alternative approaches to urban design (Winter 2016).…”

Section: The Doha Casementioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding air-conditioned lives: qualitative insights from Doha

Hitchings

2022

Buildings and Cities

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This paper uses an interview study in Doha, the capital city of Qatar, to consider the role of qualitative methods in identifying how human relationships with air-conditioning are influenced. Drawing on discussions with three groups of comparatively affluent residents who spent significant amounts of time in air-conditioned spaces, it makes four points to researchers hoping to encourage less energy demanding lifestyles. The first is that 'comfort is only one aspect' when a premature focus on comfort obscures other potentially important analytical concerns. The second is that 'air-conditioning changes cultures' when valuable insights may be gleaned from what people say about how it creates, rather than responds to, local preferences and expectations. The third is that 'comparison can be instructive' when different groups may feel themselves to possess very different relationships with air-conditioning. The fourth is that 'discussion can disappear' when those hoping to influence these relationships may benefit from understanding when and how 'conditioning conversations' currently occur and how they could be part of processes of positive local change. After substantiating these points, wider conclusions are drawn about the promotion of less energy consumptive ways of adapting to a warming world and the value of this approach to the cultural geography of air-conditioning.

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Thermal comfort standards in the Middle East: Current and future challenges

Cited by 36 publications

References 34 publications

Overcooling of offices reveals gender inequity in thermal comfort

Overcooling of offices reveals gender inequity in thermal comfort

Thermal Comfort in Buildings: Scientometric Analysis and Systematic Review

Understanding air-conditioned lives: qualitative insights from Doha

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