Investigating the Thermal Comfort and Well-being of Differently Abled War Veteran’s Housing in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Wellbeing inindoor built environment has become a crucial research topic in relation to thermal comfort which help to improve sustainable builtenvironments. Thus, thermal comfort requirements for humans is a main consideration in building designing.It’s important to consider comfort and wellbeing of people with physical disabilities. Thus, this research was conducted to investigate the indoor environment quality of spaces in relation to the thermal comfort in physically disabled war veterans’ housingin Sri Lankan context.Onfield investigation was carried out to obtain physical measurements of microclimatic parameters of interiors including indoor temperature, relative humidity and air velocity. Secondary data were collected through semi structured interviews. Results explicitly prove through onfield investigations that the mean value of the operative temperature is 32.2°C, which is above the ASHARE 55-2013 standard for comfortable thermal conditions.Mean wind velocity is 0.25m/s, is low, as there is a high operative temperature adequate interior ventilation needs to be provided. The Humphries comfort equation states the required comfort temperature is 28.92°C, the obtained mean operative temperature is more than this comfort temperature, proving the interiors are overheated. Most common adaptive behaviour of the veterans are switching fans on and moving towards open spaces. Results also indicate that there is a psychological link with thermal adaptive behaviour as these veterans opt to remain in free outdoor spaces rather than confined spaces as their battlefields. Thus, this research paper highlights on the thermal conditions needed for interior spaces for disabled war veterans and in the long-run contributing to regulations to add developments to the National Policy on Disability in Sri Lanka