Impacts of cool coating on outdoor thermal comfort, wellbeing and performance in Singapore

• Main Author: Djojomitro, Tiffany
• Other Authors: En-Hua Yang
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2020
• Subjects: Engineering::Environmental engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/145244
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Thermal comfort is people’s satisfaction with the surrounding thermal environment. Although thermal comfort is a subjective issue which varies from person to person, studies have shown that thermal comfort of a population in an area are generally the same. Currently, there are quite a number of thermal comfort studies conducted in various regions ranging from equatorial to temperate regions such as Singapore and Europe. Countries located in the equatorial region like Singapore usually have a tropical climate which is warm and humid throughout the year. Having a tropical climate is a disadvantage in Singapore because it means that temperatures will get much higher compared to countries in the temperate region due to the effects of global warming. This is not favourable to the country. Hence, researchers in Singapore had created a cool coating to coat buildings and road surfaces to reflect solar radiation such that the surrounding air temperature will reduce. It has been shown that the developed cool coating has the potential to reduce the surrounding outdoor ambient air temperatures by 2ºC. It is believed that reducing ambient temperatures by 2ºC can greatly impact the wellbeing and performance of the residents in Singapore. In this project, the effects of cool coating on human wellbeing and performance were assessed and quantified. In this paper, many previous studies relating to thermal comfort were being included and consolidated. Wellbeing of people was quantified using the effects of cool coating on the outdoor thermal comfort which results in an increase in the number of people present outside. On the other hand, performance of people was quantified based on the threshold limit value of heat stress that affects the proportion of work each worker is allowed to do per hour. The measured indicators are number of people present outdoors, cost of medical fees, threshold limit values of heat of workers and amount of allowable work outdoors in Singapore. Results in this project had proved the effectiveness of reduced outdoor ambient air temperatures on both wellbeing and performance. It was found that for every 1ºC reduction in outdoor air temperature, S$ 410 million of medical cost can be saved per year and there was a productivity gain of S$ 4.6 million. This proved that cool coating has a huge positive impact on Singapore. Hence, it is highly recommended for Singapore to apply cool coating.