Abstract
Today, more than 50% of the world’s population resides in urban areas with staggering growth rate. Of this growing population, about 90% population growth will take place in Asian and Africans cities. This growing urbanization will see a demand for infrastructure and urban services, thereby creating a burden on climate and environment amongst others. With growing urbanization, informal settlements and urban poor is a common sight especially in emerging economies. Amongst the worst affected population in terms of climate impacts are the urban poor. UN-Habitat in 2016 reported that 30% of urban residents dwell in informal settlements. Various studies related with socio cultural aspects, encroachments and authorizations, sanitation improvement etc. have been focused on quite extensively. However, built environment studies on environmental comfort in such informal settlements remain less explored. Cities in India typically experience very high demand for indoor cooling primarily due to its climatic context and settings. Enclosures of dwelling units in informal settlements are often built with unconventional buildings materials resulting in uncomfortable indoors for its occupants. The aim of this research is to study the impacts of environmental parameters along with personal parameters of behavior on thermal comfort in these informal settlements. The study will investigate this in a selected informal settlement in Mumbai city by on site data collected through data loggers installed in dwelling units. The personal behavioral aspects of the occupants will be studied through surveys and onsite interviews. Further it is also observed that people spend a lot of their time outdoors within the settlements for daily activities and needs like social interaction and personal comfort. Thus, both indoor and outdoor thermal comfort is necessary to be studied and investigated in such settlements. The study seeks a data driven approach of intervention and analysis for the built environment which can assist stakeholders to develop design guidelines and strategies for thermal comfort in the informal settlements.
