Reclaiming refugee agency and its implications for shelter design in refugee camps

Abstract: Refugee agency refers to the notion of decision making exercised by forced migrants, and their efforts aimed at improving life in the context of displacement. As such, it has emerged as a useful concept to channel discussions about the challenges of current refugee encampment practices, which we argue encompasses consequences for the design and provision of shelter solutions. Building on the evidence collected in selected refugee camps of Jordan and Ethiopia, we suggest that acknowledging and incorporating the voices of refugees can not only enhance their well-being in climatically, socially and politically challenging environments, but it could also be beneficial to other actors such as humanitarian agencies and host governments. While we recognize the constrains arising in these contexts, we focus on the importance of adaptations and customization of shelters that we found to be the leitmotiv and, more critically, a fundamental humanizing factor of refugee experience in camps. The refugees’ freedom to make choices about their own shelters can then be used to rethink how to deliver better environments in which camp inhabitants can live in dignity. Although engineering design can only facilitate agency, rather than give it, it could help build the consensus about the pre-requisites of what constitutes truly ‘appropriate’ shelters

Are Green Buildings Doing Enough? The role of green certification and gender on sick building syndrome

One of the promised benefits of green buildings is providing healthier indoor environments for their occupants, however, this notion is still debated. To test this, a sample of 502 office-based workers from 13 air- conditioned office buildings (44.4% female and 55.6% male) in Jordan completed a questionnaire on Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) symptoms. The role played by gender in symptom-reporting was also investigated. Findings showed that building type made no significant difference to the prevalence of all SBS symptoms except the tiredness symptom which was slightly higher in the occupants of conventional buildings. Surprisingly, green buildings and conventional buildings had a higher occurrence of SBS symptoms than what industry standards allow for (up to 20%), suggesting that both building types would be classified as sick buildings. Results have also shown that the only significant difference between male and female workers was in the cough and sore throat symptom, which was reported more often by female workers. These findings reinforce the need for further attention to the occupants’ perceived health in the green buildings, which may use as an indict of the building performance

Are Green Buildings Doing Enough? The role of green certification and gender on sick building syndrome

One of the promised benefits of green buildings is providing healthier indoor environments for their occupants, however, this notion is still debated. To test this, a sample of 502 office-based workers from 13 air- conditioned office buildings (44.4% female and 55.6% male) in Jordan completed a questionnaire on Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) symptoms. The role played by gender in symptom-reporting was also investigated. Findings showed that building type made no significant difference to the prevalence of all SBS symptoms except the tiredness symptom which was slightly higher in the occupants of conventional buildings. Surprisingly, green buildings and conventional buildings had a higher occurrence of SBS symptoms than what industry standards allow for (up to 20%), suggesting that both building types would be classified as sick buildings. Results have also shown that the only significant difference between male and female workers was in the cough and sore throat symptom, which was reported more often by female workers. These findings reinforce the need for further attention to the occupants’ perceived health in the green buildings, which may use as an indict of the building performance

Influence of overheating criteria in the appraisal of building fabric performance

In response to the threat of anthropogenic climate change, heating dominated countries have focused on re-ducing the space conditioning demand by increasing insulation and airtightness. However, given climate projec-tions and lifespan of buildings, concerns have arisen on whether these strategies deliver resilient solutions. As overheating can be evaluated through different criteria, this paper investigates if building fabric performance is subject to bias from the assessment method chosen and account for discrepancies between previous studies.To answer this, we modelled dwellings compliant with 1995 and 2006 UK building regulations and the FEES and Passivhaus standards in a consistent and realistic manner. The parametric study included different weathers, thermal mass, glazing ratios, shading strategies, occupancy profiles, infiltration levels, purge ventilation strate-gies and orientations, resulting in 16128 simulation models. To provide confidence in the output, the base model was first validated against data collected from a real well-insulated dwelling.Results show that the benchmark choice is influential in the evaluation of building fabric performance as it is able to inverse overheating trends. Criteria based on adaptive comfort best represented expected behaviour, where improved building fabric is a resilient measure that reduces overheating as long as occupants are able to open windows for ventilation

Weather files for remote places:Leveraging reanalyses and satellite datasets

Weather files capture the time-varying conditions under which buildings perform and, as such, they constitute one of the fun-damental inputs for building performance simulation. In theory, the creation of weather files only requires collecting data at a certain frequency for a key number of variables during the time of interest. In practice, several problems arise. Direct measurement on a project basis can be a costly operation considering the site accessibility and the number of instruments needed to collect complete weather observations. Sometimes, this is simply impossible if a study requires historical data. These issues are traditionally overcome using the weather data collected at a nearby public weather stations, but this can be equally challenging, or even impossible, depending on how far away the station is and the frequency and completeness of observations. Arising from the need to simulate the thermal performance of buildings at remote locations, this study presents an approach to generate weather files based on satellite imaging and reanalysis datasets. Given the good agreement with local station’s observations, it is shown how these publicly available datasets can be combined to create weather files suitable for building performance simulation. This is applied to a case study to compare the performance of a building and its systems against traditional weather files. The work quantifies and discusses the discrepancy obtained between the different sources. Overall, results indicate that satellite and reanalysis datasets constitute a suitable resource to create weather files for building performance simulation.<br/