Quantification of Bioclimatic Performance of Rural Coastal Low-Cost Dwellings in the Sundarbans

Abstract

As we are aware that climate change poses a significant threat to environmental quality, human health, and well-being, etc., it is important to mitigate the environmental adverse impacts on human health. To do this, a necessary step forward is a bioclimatic analysis that includes a quantitative understanding of eco-human-energy friendliness. The study evaluates the environmental performance of low-cost coastal dwellings by analyzing bioclimatic components. Primary data was collected from field investigation and the perception response of 1332 dwellers from the selected blocks of coastal Sundarban region, West Bengal including remote rural, rural, and semi-urban areas was recorded. The statistical analysis indicated the upper 95% confidence limit for each subgroup and a normalization of the upper confidence limit with a unity score of 10 for each subset of parameters. The total score of the five categories of bioclimatic components was rounded to 150. A comprehensive evaluation of bioclimatic aspects of low-cost dwellings and scoring of features (design strategies, indoor environmental quality, thermal comfort, and energy efficiency) significantly yielded a quantitative rating of the performance of a rural built environment. Overall, this study successfully quantified the evaluation of the bioclimatic performance of low-cost coastal rural dwellings, which may be useful to develop strategies or building codes for the passive design of dwellings in the coastal, rural areas of India.