Technical Report: Reviewing the relationships between urban morphological variables and Outdoor Thermal Comfort (OTC) to assess comfort implication of densification for Singapore

• Main Authors: BANERJEE, Shreya, CHING, Ngai Yan, YIK, Sin Kang
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2022
• Subjects: Development Studies; Urban Studies
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/120; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/cis_research/article/1119/viewcontent/CS_Template_Technical_Report_Urban_densification_Urban_design_SB.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Majority thermal comfort studies focus on exploring the relationships between subjective parameters such as personal, physiological, psychological, and behavioral attributes and how they shape Outdoor Thermal Comfort (OTC). Although some attempts have been made to analyze the impact of urban morphological variables, but few have explored the effect of urban densification on OTC. Assessing the impact of density attributes is especially important for highly dense cities such as Singapore. Keeping this in consideration, ths study aims to provide a review-based analysis connecting OTC and various density related morphological variables. Firstly, this report analyses existing literature to provide snapshots on various attributes of OTC such as definition, comfort ranges, tools, and indices as well as relevance of OTC research in tropics, next, it reviews existing research exploring impact of urban density and related morphological variables on outdoor microclimate for tropical and sub-tropical high-density cities. Further, it has explored existing building bye laws, urban planning guidelines and various Development Control Regulations (DCR) of Singapore to understand the climate responsiveness potential of the existing guidelines. Next, this report identifies and summarizes urban morphological variables related to site planning that can be considered for densification to positively impact OTC. Lastly, this study proposes a framework to connect density related attributes and OTC for a tropical city.