The CIE Standard Sky type for any Indian location is fairly unidentified. To overcome this gap, Mahindra TERI Centre of Excellence (MT CoE) for Sustainable Habitats, a joint research initiative of Mahindra Lifespaces and TERI is working on a sky modelling research study, which is likely to predict with certainty, what kind of standard sky conditions prevail on the selected location of data recording. Once the data is gathered, it could be converted into algorithms to facilitate the formulation of plugins that could support building information modelling (BIM) software. These kinds of inputs could supplement intelligent building control (e.g., fenestration automation or advancement in electro-opaque glass) in the future. Furthermore, these findings will provide architects and building designers with a reliable and simple alternative that incorporates the daylight coefficient approach to predict indoor daylight illuminance under realistic sky conditions.
This report presents the approach, methodology, key findings, observations and way forward to the ‘Sky Modelling Study for the Location of Gurugram, India’.
This guideline lays down a set of ways to overcome the challenges related to water conservation and achieving water efficiency in a residential township. It is a help guide which can help townships to move on the path of becoming net water positive i.e. reducing the dependency of fresh water supplies. The measures listed in the document are innovative, practical, and easy to implement as they have been developed after conducting thorough research and water audits of several townships across India to understand the issues and design solutions accordingly.
The guide is meant to assist building practitioners and urban local bodies in the water sector to plan and implement projects with an aim of achieving sustainability. This guide is an attempt to mainstream water efficiency and conservation from policy to practice. Its thematic areas include in situ water augmentation, water efficiency and behavioural changes, with new interventions introduced and effectiveness of measures that can be implemented on different scales.
In light of the government’s commitment to construct 'Housing for All' under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban by 2022, integrating principles of energy and resource efficiency becomes crucial. India needs to promote and integrate strategies focusing on the residential sector to limit the current unsustainable trend of escalating energy demand. Thus, ‘energy-efficient affordable housing’ is the key to facilitating the process of sustainable urbanization. Oftentimes, daylighting aspects are neglected while designing a building. However, daylighting can contribute to a significant reduction of lighting energy loads and improve the occupants’ health and well-being. Presently, there is a lack of consolidated and coherent information in India prescribing methods to integrate daylight in affordable housing projects in-line with the standards, policies, and available guidelines.
In this context, as part of the building envelope studies, a guidebook on ‘Daylighting prescription for affordable housing in India’ has been developed. This guidebook intends to enable the building designers and practitioners to create a potentially day-lit and energy-efficient fenestration by providing the basics of daylight integration. The study details the daylighting parameters, thumb rules, and performance metrics required for incorporating daylight through appropriate fenestration design for affordable housing in India.
With increasing population, rising temperatures and frequently occurring heat waves, thermal comfort in the built environment is bound to drive the health and wellbeing of India. In light of the government’s commitments to achieve net-zero emissions by 2070, and construct 20 million affordable houses under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) by year 2022 etc., pledging ‘Thermal Comfort for All’ in an energy efficient and climate friendly manner is crucial.
India needs to develop energy-efficient strategies focused on the residential sector to limit the current trend of unsustainable escalating energy demand. Designing energy efficient buildings for reduced heat load, mainstreaming adaptive comfort approach, maximizing daylight illuminations and cutting down the over-dependence on refrigerant based air conditioning are central to India’s energy security and climate change mitigation efforts.
Therefore, ‘Thermal Comfort prescription for cooling dominated Indian Residential buildings’ guidebook has been developed to understand the process of a residential building design located in cooling dominated regions following the prominent standards, policies and available guidelines for minimizing the cooling load, energy costs, and maximize thermal comfort. These guidebooks act as another step forward in providing relevant information to designers and practitioners to build thermally comfortable and low carbon homes for upcoming Indian building stock.
Energy reduction in the built environment is a continuing challenge and the lighting within is a major contributor to the energy demands of a building. Furthermore, issues related to visual comfort have been persistent for the last many years and have posed a challenge to building professionals and architects, as these concepts have limited know-how in the Indian geo-climatic context. Good energy-efficient lighting in the indoor environment with well-lit task areas is essential for optimizing visual performance, visual comfort, and the associated energy reductions. As a part of the visual comfort studies, “Guidelines for optimum visual comfort derived from key performance parameters” has been developed through a consultative process involving academia, lighting experts, and building professionals, as a step towards achieving visual comfort and glare-free spaces in the built environment. These guidelines have been prepared to help the building professionals, owners, and end-users to generate awareness of the impacts of glare. It talks about different lighting schemes, hardware typologies, steps for lighting designing, and concludes with best practices for attaining optimum visual comfort in the indoor spaces.
One of the activities of the Mahindra TERI Centre of Excellence project is the Visual Comfort Module under which a questionnaire survey is developed to investigate the effects of lighting and human behavior patterns on subjective visual comfort. The objective of the survey is to develop a relationship between the results of the literature survey and the practical experience of occupants. The questionnaire proposed for the project is the result of a survey of reports from similar research studies and is designed considering certain parameters such as age, gender, physical environment as these play a vital role in the achievement of visual comfort. The results of this study will help to generate awareness of the detailed factors involved in visual comfort. The study also shows the importance of daylighting for people’s overall satisfaction, and this evidence may assist policy-makers in establishing appropriate guidelines and standards. The findings presented in the report would further also help planners and architects implement improved daylighting in their housing projects, and provide residents with better visual environments.
The study analyses various parameters such as city growth, land use, demographics and social & economic character, water policies and institutional setup at central, state and city level, water sources and its related infrastructure. These parameters are essential to find avenues for water sustainability, quantify anthropogenic and natural flows into and out of the town, and develop a metaphorical framework of water metabolism of the area to analyse flows of water within it and selection of dominant indicators that impact urban hydrology. The study of these parameters has led to the identification of potential risks associated with the urban hydrology and management of Gurugram city, especially focusing on the aspects related to the stakeholder engagement and flood risk. To overcome these threats, a list of recommendations has been made. The report also goes a step further to identify the reasons for weak implementation of the proposed recommendations and suggest measures for strengthening it.
During summers of 2019, Chennai’s multiple water reservoirs ran dry, resulting in rows of empty pots dotting the pavements and people lining up for supplies from water tankers. For a city that gets an average of 1,400 mm of rainfall a year and had suffered heavy floods back in 2015, this has been unprecedented. From extreme rainfall events to no rain, Chennai has often swung between floods and drought. This report tries to identify probable reasons for such extreme climatic events, risks associated with it for the region and provide strategies to mitigate the same.
Pune was hit twice by destructive flash floods in year 2019, first in early August and then in September, something which was not seen in years in the region. Also, over the past decade Pune’s water woes have multiplied with areas facing frequent water cuts during summers. The erratic weather patterns along with water management flaws have aggravated the situation. This report touches upon these growing risks and lays out recommendations to overcome the water challenges.
Glare is a phenomenon caused by extremely bright light sources or by strong brightness contrasts in the visual field. Its sources include windows, glossy magazine pages, computer screens, or incorrectly designed and installed artificial lighting. Glare comes in both direct and indirect forms, is a chief cause of visual discomfort – and even visual disability. This abridged version of the "Glare Management Guidelines for Artificial Lighting" have been developed through a consultative process involving academia, lighting experts and building professionals. These encompass definitions for various types of glare indices, including their impact on human health. The methodology for calculating the glare indices is also included as a part of the guidelines which will help design professionals to quantify glare in numeric terms, these guidelines will keep evolving in keeping with the advancements in technologies and practices in the urban built environment.