A Study of the Effect of Building Designs on Climate Change: Mitigation and Adaption

Abstract

Urbanization and development are the inevitable consequences of economic growth. With urbanization, various issues of climate change are cropping up. Urban Heat Island (UHI) is a significant phenomenon to manifest the changes in climate of a region. The present research attempts to establish the presence of this phenomenon in Roorkee, India on one hand. And, to study change in architectural styles of the buildings in the course of time as the possible reasons of these climatic differences on the other hand. Finally, the research concludes with recommendations and suggestion to mitigate and adapt to climate changes through the implementation of an indigenously designed algorithm. Index Terms—Uhi, surface transformation, land surface temperature, minimum u-value algorithm. I. I NTRODUCTION Urbanization has lead to transformation of natural surfaces to urban land. Construction of buildings and infrastructure has made undue unavoidable changes in land surface properties. One important property is the land surface temperature (LST). LST is responsible for the change in air temperature of a region (1). Anthropogenic activities like use of vehicles and air conditioners, and emission of gases is also responsible for the same. But urban development plays a major role. The type of building material used and the percentage of natural land transformed to urban land are solely responsible for the change in land surface properties. This further result in change of local weather conditions and eventually leads to climate change. The construction of buildings, roads and other impervious surfaces leads to increase of temperature of that region as compared to the surrounding rural area. This phenomenon is known as Urban Heat Island (UHI) (2). UHI is a significant manifestation of climate change. The present study aims to investigate the presence of UHI in Roorkee, India. 268 meters from mean sea level, Roorkee has an extreme and erratic continental climate. The paper also studies the architectural and construction styles of the various buildings in the study area to empathize the causes of UHI.