Fully enclosed vegetated courtyard in hot humid tropics

Vegetation is considered a prominent strategy to improve the overall thermal performance of a courtyard. Most tropical fully-enclosed courtyard buildings are characterised with vegetation, but empirical studies on its effects remain to be limited. This study aims to examine the thermal performance of a fully-enclosed vegetated courtyard in hot, humid tropical weather, in order to develop design strategies for enhancing its performance. Field measurements and computer simulations using Envi-met V4.2 software and Rayman Pro 2 model were carried out to measure parameters such as air temperature, mean radiant temperature, and physiological equivalent temperature. Field measurements were conducted on a fully-enclosed courtyard building in the Raja Zarith Sofiah library, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, for validation against computer simulations. In addition, five courtyard ratios comprising 1:1:1, 1:2:1, 1:3:2, 1:2:2, and 1:3:3, were selected and simulated with different leaf area density (LAD) values, namely, 0.93 LAD with example of melaleuca leucadendron (ml), 7.9 LAD with example of Mesua ferrea (mf), and 9.7 LAD with example of ficus benjamina (fb), whereby the percentage of the vegetated area was 25%, 50%, and 75% respectively. East-West orientation was used for courtyard ratios of 1:1:1, 1:2:2, 1:3:3, 1:2:1 and 1:3:2. This is because the East-West orientations are the worst scenarios, as they are the most exposed to solar radiation compared to the North-South, Northwest-Southwest and Northeast-Southwest orientations for the courtyard. The results reveal that 9.7 LAD (fb) recorded the highest average temperature reduction of 1.2°C, followed by 7.9 LAD (mf), with an average air temperature reduction of 0.71°C, and 0.93 LAD (ml), with an average air temperature reduction of 0.34°C. Finally, the study identified the quantity and type of LAD for effective shading and evapotranspiration cooling process during the hottest hours. Besides, the cooling effects were more significant with a larger percentage of LAD. The findings from this research serve as design strategies for the effective use of vegetation to enhance courtyard thermal performance

Validation of envi-met software using measured and predicted air temperatures in the courtyard of Chinese shophouse Malacca

In recent times sustainability design has received a rapid attention, courtyard as one often refers to a microclimate modifier, played an important role in the concept of sustainability. However, studies show that there are various ways to check the performance of courtyard, such ways include field measurement and simulations. This is to enhance the viability of the courtyard design. Chinese shophouse is one of practical examples of courtyard in this context. Generally, the inclusion of courtyard in a building fabric improve the microclimate, for the study of the Chinese shophouse reaches an acceptable level, a thorough validation of the software is crucial. This study intends to validate the envi-met software using the measured and predicted air temperature in a courtyard of Chinese shophouse in Malacca for further analysis. The measured and simulated air temperature of the courtyard of Chinese shophouse is analysed using the statistical method. Results indicate that the measured air temperature found to be in good agreement (d = 0.8) with the simulated air temperature. The performance of the simulator (envi-met software) is highly satisfactory. This method of validation can also extended to other simulation software that uses the outdoor environment

Covid-19 Resilience: A Review

The world-wide occurrence of Covid-19 has made prevention and mitigation of the pandemic an issue of serious concern universally. This paper reviews literature on Covid-19 resilience with a view to exploring the varied aspects been put in place to curtail or mitigate the disastrous tendencies associated with the prevalence of this contemporary disease. The sources of data for this paper were purely secondary with particular reference to covid-19 resilience. From the review it was inferred that aspect of Covid-19 resilience in relation to physical planning, tourism and community resilience have been undertaken significantly but aspect that relates to health resilience more especially which concerns people with terminal diseases needs adequate attention for further exploration as well as researches on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Covid-19 resilience in relation to the environment also needs to be conducted the more. &nbsp