Thermal comfort design zone delineation for India using GIS

Abstract

This paper describes a procedure devised using Geographical Information System (GIS) to delineate boundaries of zones, where any change in thermal comfort requirement indicates corresponding change in responsive building design strategies. Very high resolution interpolated climatic data subset for India has been used in this analysis so as to distinctly represent the variety of climates experienced in India. The raster datasets of climatic parameters have been analyzed in GIS to get derived and classified parameters required in the Mahoney Tablesmethod for computation of six climatic indicators. These six indicators have been used in the selection of suitable climate-responsive building strategies from 8 strategy groups for the whole dataset. The selected strategies in 8 groups are superimposed together to identify 62 Thermal Comfort Design Zones with unique combination of building design strategies. The proposed zones can be useful in the legislative tools for implementation of energy conservation measures and sustainable building practices. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd.