Abstract:
Increasing energy demand is a vital concern for city development. From different
studies, it is been found that, significant parts of the world’s energy resources are used
for controlling the building’s internal environments. An aspect that has often been
overlooked is that energy consumption is influenced by urban microclimate and urban
microclimate is influenced by the urban settings or urban morphology. For a tropical
city like Dhaka, urban design has the potential for reducing the extent use of energy by
modulating its microclimate.
This research work is focused on studying the relationship among the urban
microclimate, energy demand and urban morphological characteristics of Dhaka city.
The aim of the research is predicting the impact of urban morphological aspects on
energy consumption by way of energy spatialization with studying the relationship
between energy consumption and environmental parameters of the microclimates.
Microclimatic simulations, energy spatialized map and statistical analysis have been
used to address the research aim. Recent studies reveal that energy requires space for
production and distribution. So, if energy data is spatialized and observed against other
spatial and environmental parameters potentials for unique insights are opened with
possibility for knowledge of new causal connections. Very few studies have been
conducted linking these spatial structures with energy consumption.
The study was based on field data and computer based simulations. For this research,
an area of Dhaka city has been taken as study area to find the relationship between
urban microclimate and energy consumption. The study has been done on twenty
samples of built forms (buildings) from a selected area with various morphological
aspects and having similar physical, behavioral and socio-cultural characteristics of the
occupants, to find the relationship between urban morphology and energy consumption.
This research examines various environmental parameters of microclimates, energy
consumption pattern, built forms and morphological aspects of an urban setting.
Correlations have been drawn between spatialized historical energy data from utility
agencies and environmental parameters of the microclimates through parametric studies
over different time of day and a range of season. Urban design parameters and thermal
factors of the microclimates studied have been discussed and indications for
development of guidelines for low energy urban development have made.
