Building Environmentally Sustainable Towns in Singapore
18 January 2010
"We have to work closely to meet with the development schedule of the Punggol waterway, so that the findings of this study are able to provide feedback to the design of Punggol."
Assoc Prof Wong Nyuk Hien, Department of Building of the NUS School of Design and Environment
SUSTAINABILITY STUDY: Assoc Prof Wong Nyuk Hien
Residents at Punggol Town can look forward to having a cooler outdoor environment and naturally ventilated indoor spaces in the near future. The team led by Assoc Prof Wong Nyuk Hien, Department of Building at the NUS School of Design and Environment (SDE) has inked an agreement with the Housing Development Board (HDB) to optimise the design and development of a prototype for a green and sustainable township. This is the first climatic study conducted in a residential township in Singapore.
The aims of the year-long study are three-fold:- Researchers will identify hot and cool spots in the study area with different parametric variations using the Geographical Information System software and the Screening Tool for Estate Environment Evaluation tool, a proprietary software.
- The wind condition and ventilation potentials of the study area would also be looked into. This study would involve a wind tunnel testing and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation study.
- Using the Ecotect software, the research team will capture the solar radiation profile of Punggol Town. The Ecotect simulates and calculates the amount of solar radiation received by the environment and the buildings. It also analyses the shadowing effect from the surrounding buildings.
On how the idea of conducting the climatic study at Punggol was mooted, Assoc Prof Wong said: "With rapid urbanisation, there has been a tremendous growth in population and buildings in cities. The high concentration of hard surfaces triggered many environmental issues. For example, the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect is a phenomenon where air temperatures in densely built cities are higher than the suburban rural areas. The primary root of UHI is the rapid urbanisation, which replaces natural landscape with enormous hard surfaces such as building facades, roads, pavements in cities," he noted.
Assoc Prof Wong said that a long term analysis of the weather data in Singapore has shown that the ambient air temperature has increased by about 1 degree Celsius over the past 20 years. "A study of the UHI effect in Singapore has also revealed that Singapore has a UHI intensity (the temperature difference between rural and urban area) of about 5 degrees Celsius. To combat such an effect, it is essential that designers should be conscious of the inter-relationship between urban design and the climatic conditions," he said.
The ambitious research project is not without challenges. Assoc Prof noted that conducting the township-scale of CFD study required extensive computing resources and knowledge. "We have to work closely to meet with the development schedule of the Punggol waterway, so that the findings of this study are able to provide feedback to the design of Punggol," he noted.
The researchers from the HDB Building Research Institute and NUS have a funding of close to S$960,000 from the Ministry of National Development, HDB and NUS. The research project is coordinated by SDE's Centre for Sustainable Asian Cities. Preliminary results in developing this prototype for a green and sustainable township are expected in the middle of next year.