Effects of landscape environmental settings on microclimate in enhancing pedestrian walking distance in tropical campus environment

Design is one of the primary elements in conceptualizing campus conducive for learning. One of the criteria that define such as a campus is the promotion of greens, open spaces and walkways. Walkways are important as it helps to create a conducive and healthy campus. An environment with comfortable walkways tends to entice walking. Walking contributes to health and a sustainable way of transportation around campus. Nevertheless, a tropical climate has high ambient air temperatures and relative humidity year-round making walking uncomfortable and unpopular. A suitable microclimate can provide thermal ameliorating effects on pedestrians. However, how it affects pedestrian walking distance and the landscape environmental settings have not been adequately investigated. A good knowledge on campus microclimates becomes important in sustainable campus planning and design. Therefore, this research investigated pedestrians’ thermal comfort and comfortable walking distances for different landscape settings in a tropical campus pedestrian environment. It observes and measures pedestrian thermal comfort and walking distance based principally on the physical properties of the landscape settings and the surrounding environment. The research posited four research questions. Data collection was divided into three parts. First, an observation method was used to identify the various types of landscape environmental setting in tropical campuses. Four Malaysian higher learning campuses were selected to evaluate the existing conditions of the pedestrian environment according to the Landscape Environmental Settings for Pedestrians (LESP). This led to the proposed five types of LESP (Type 1, Type 2, Type 3, Type 4, and Type 5). The second and third part of data collections were carried out in Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) campus in Serdang, Selangor. In the second part microclimatic field measurements involving five microclimatic parameters (Air temperature (Ta), globe temperature (Tg), surface temperature (Ts), wind velocity (v), and relative humidity (Rh) were collected for all the types of LESP. These were then ranked according to pedestrian comfort. The third part involved field surveys and measurements. The field survey was conducted in UPM campus at the five types of LESP sites concurrently with field measurements of the five microclimatic parameters. Results revealed that different types of LESP provide different thermal comforts. The findings also indicated that it is important to modify the solar radiation in a walkway environment by having a continuous shade. This could be provided by either trees alone or trees together with man-made shade structures along the walkway. The study also found evidences that the impact of LESP on comfortable walking distance in a tropical environment is related to pedestrians’ thermal comfort. The more LESP influences pedestrians’ thermal comfort, the longer will be the comfortable walking distance. LESP with full shades from two rows of trees can provide a 1.0 km comfortable walking distance. Thus, it can be concluded that LESPs influence microclimates in enhancing pedestrian thermal comfort of tropical environments. Therefore, LESPs that are conducive for walking should be provided in tropical campuses to encourage walking. The findings provide new knowledge for landscape architects and urban planners in specifying appropriate microclimatic interventions to improve pedestrian comfort in tropical environments.

Text FRSB 2019 13 - ir.pdf Download (1MB)

Actions (login required)

View Item