Developing building comfort index from building climate factors in a tropical urban environment

Abstract

This study investigates on the internal climate condition of buildings in an urban area situated at the Infrastructure University Kuala Lumpur (IUKL). The factors that contribute to the effect of building climate are being identified and the building climate information portrays by using the Geographical Information System (GIS). The main contributing factors of building climate are building design, building material, orientation of the building towards the sun and surrounding climate around the building. The main objectives of this study are to develop a building comfort index using geospatial technologies and to investigate the building climate factors based on the building climate data collected from building samples. The devices used are temperature and humidity meter and noise level meter. The building comfort data collected from each room are room temperature, humidity and noise. The study area is in Kajang, Selangor area, which is being identified as an urban area. Buildings chosen are composed of ten (10) buildings in IUKL. The results of the study revealed that the building climate index (BCI) for all buildings in IUKL comprise of six (6) buildings are having BCI of Comfortable and four (4) buildings with BCI of Less Comfortable. A mathematical equation was obtained from the data collected by using the statistical power formula and tolerances of the data were being obtained from predicted data which has 72% tolerance and onto tested data which has 93% tolerance. The results of the study implicate building manager, architect, building surveyor, town planner and building user. It is hoped that further studies focus on obtaining the BCI of the buildings once in every three months of the year.