JKR-UTM Research Collaboration MOA Signing Ceremony

22nd July 2010 marked an important milestone for UTM and JKR when MoA was signed for the Research Collaboration between Researchers from Built Environment Research Group (BERG), FAB UTM and Architect Branch JKR Research Group. The MoA was signed by Y Bhg Dato' Prof. Ir. Dr. Ashari Mohamad, Pengarah kanan Bhg Latihan & Penyelidikan JKR on behalf JKR and Prof Dr. Ruzairi Rahim, RMC Director on behalf of UTM. The signing ceremony held in UTM Admin Building in Skudai attended by officers and academic staff from UTM including the Dean of FAB, the Dean of SUTRA (Sustainable Research Alliance), Researchers from both parties staff from FAB, RMC and JKR. The RM450,000.00 research allocation is awarded by JKR to BERG headed by Associate Prof Dr Mohd Zin Kandar as Principle Researcher (PI) together with JKR counterpart headed by Mdm Young Razidah. The research title is "Developing Comfortable & Energy Efficient Government Office Building Design" will take 20 months to complete and the ultimate output will be in a form of EE Office Building Design guideline for designers.

Collaborative Research between JKR & FAB UTM

Developing A Comfortable and Energy Efficient Government's Office Building Design
A Collaborative Research between Building Technology & Innovation Section, Architectural Branch, JKR and UTM Built Environmental Research Group.


JKR has over the years become the driving forces on development and construction of government buildings such as office, schools, police stations and residential quarters for government staff. JKR has design standard office building for government since 1960’s. Currently some buildings for government office were design by appointed consultants.

The current trends on office building design worldwide has shifted on office that is not only efficient and environmental friendly but also provides high level of comfortable and user response space layout in order to suite to new office space usage. Thus the future standard for government office building design must be responsive with dynamic works environment focusing on the whole building design solution, which are comfortable, energy efficient and create productive environment.

The question is does the government office design comfortable to employee? In providing comfortable works area, are office buildings designs with Energy Efficient criterion?

Studies shows current office building in Malaysia consumes high energy with average Building Energy Index (BEI) of 200 to 300 kWh/m2/yr, whereas the BEI between 65 to 135 kWh/m2/yr is achievable if the building were design with high consideration on climatic and energy efficient consideration as demonstrated by GEO in Bangi and LEO Building in Putrajaya.

In hot and humid climates like in Malaysia, natural sunlight have draw back of increasing heat gain into the building, which in turn increases the use of air-condition load if designer does not carefully understood the impact of solar radiation. Use of daylighting is not considered as an important design criterion in most government buildings. The main reason is the misconception of differentiating sunlight and daylight characteristics.

Generally sunlight transmits solar heat gains but proper daylight do not consist of heat gain. Direct use of natural light (sunlight & daylight) contribute to direct solar heat gain and glare on the office occupants. Furthermore high cooling load and energy consumption are unresolving issues that the building owners have to bear.

Although there were effort to protect direct solar radiation by introducing shading device, there are little guideline found. Some researches previously studied the impact of solar shading, window size and room geometry on building daylight distribution and energy consumption as demonstrated by Zain-Ahmad (2002); Sharifah and Sai (2004); Ossen (2005); Loutzenhiser et al. (2007); Havid et al. (2008); Lim et al. (2009). However, environmental research demonstrates that the performances of building elements are not really applied the occupant comfortable in office building as a whole. So far, there is lack of focus of integrating the building system to fulfill building environmental performance requirements and occupant comfort.

This study investigates the effect of natural lighting on existing office building designs and the impact on occupant comfort as well as energy efficiency in office building. The research will begin with the investigation of a number of existing government offices. The study will be conducted using both social or field survey and computer simulation modeling software. The findings of the study will be in the form of reports and guideline for building designer. The proposed office building design guideline will not only comply with the MS: 1525 building performance criterion but also look for innovative solutions appropriate for Malaysia climate and office space requirement today and in future.

This RM450K research project headed by Associate Profesor Dr Mohd Zin Kandar. Other co-researcher are Prof Dr. Mohd Hamdan, A.P Dr Aminatuzuhariah, Dr Delsan Remaz and five researchers from JKR headed by Mdm Young Razidah.

SB10 SEA IN KL FOCUSED ON SUSTAINABLE BUILDING

SB10 SEA held in KL Convention Centre near KLCC from 4-6 May 2010, attended by experts and professionals from South east asia, Europe, South America and Middle East. Institute Sultan Iskandar UTM is the main organiser focused on sustainable building or green architecture. Geo Building and Leo Building in Malaysia and Zero energy building Singapore is among green initiatives highlighted and elaborated in the conference. Low Carbon emission and green materials are also issues debated and to be resolved by professionals in building industry.

JSPS Meeting in Penang

The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Group 10 meeting was held in Penang recently (10 Feb 201o). Some of the member were there with the present of Japanese counterpart i.e. Prof Shuichi Hokoi, Prof Yuichiro Kodama and AP Dr. Takashi Kaneta.
Networking developed during the JSPS program since 2004 will be continued in the form of cooperation in research and academic activities.

EE campaign at Sekolah Islam Hidayah

Friday 5 Feb 2010, Energy Efficiency talks and campaign were organised at Sekolah Menengah Islam Hidayah JB (SMIH). Apart from the social activity, this is a 'project base learning' (PBL) of Climatic Architecture Technology (CAT) subject taught in Architecture Department FAB.
Attended about 500 students and 30 teachers of SMIH, 10 Architecture students and tutor of the CAT subject presented the talk entitle "Understanding Climate Change & Global Warming Phenomena" and "Energy Efficiency Practices in School".

As part of university students learning program, the EE campaign has an objective to help SMIH to reduce energy/electricity up to 10% from the current consumption. It will involve 'walk through energy audit' and continuous campaign on EE at school through collaborative effort and assistance by the tutor and students of CAT subject.

Facts Impacts Climate Change

There are hard facts and impacts about climate change.
1. Climate change is strongly supported by hard science.
2. Our climate is changing rapidly , and at a rate faster than what we have experienced in all of human history.
3. By burning fossil fuels for electricity and other industries we are releasing billions of tons of carbon dioxide and changing the climate.
4. Carbon dioxide acts like a blanket, trapping the sun’s heat around the planet.
5. We can stop our carbon dioxide emissions and slow the rate of change.
6. We are not doing enough to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
7. We must act now! 


The Impacts of Climate Change
Physical Impacts
1. Average global land and sea temperatures are rising.
2. The incidence of Droughts, wildfires and flooding are increasing globally. 

3. Glaciers and the permafrost are melting. 

4. Ice at the North and South Poles is melting and breaking up. 

5. Hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons are increasing in severity.
6. Fresh water resources are diminishing.

Social Impacts
1. People are already being displaced by rising sea levels. 

2. Agriculture and food supply is being affected by droughts. 

3. Countries are suffering loss of life, homes, and livelihoods from the increased severity of hurricanes, storms and flooding. 

4. Insurance costs are spiralling due to ‘natural’ damages.
5. Disease carrying insects are moving into new areas as temperature increases. Populations of other insects, like the pine beetle are exploding with devastating effect. 

6. Poorer countries like Africa will be amongst the most severely disadvantaged as they have few resources to adapt, and the regions are devastated by climate change.
7. Rivers have less regular flow, and water for drinking and crops is drying up.
8. The economic cost of NOT taking action is breathtaking.
Don’t despair! We can reduce our carbon emissions, but we must act now! Start with the 3 Step Climate Action Plan
Facts Impacts Climate Change
Read more from : http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/facts-impacts-climate-change.html
... and more from http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/climate.html

FACTS ABOUT ENERGY

World energy consumption is expected to increase 40% to 50% by the year 2010, and the global mix of fuels remains as; renewables (18%), nuclear (4%) and fossil (78%)
World energy consumption is projected to remain substantially the same as today, thus global carbon dioxide emissions would also increase 50% to 60%.
Fossil fuels are depleted at a rate that is 100,000 times faster than they are formed.
Worldwide, some 2 billion people are currently without electricity.
Developing countries use 30% of global energy. Rapid population growth, combined with economic growth, will rapidly increase that percentage in the next 10 years.
The World Bank estimates that investments of $1 trillion will be needed in this decade and upwards of $4 trillion during the next 30 years to meet developing countries' electricity needs alone.
According to Oil & Gas Journal (OGJ), Malaysia held proven oil reserves of 3.0 billion barrels as of January 2007, down from a peak of 4.6 billion barrels in 1996. The majority of the country’s oil reserves are located off the coast of peninsular Malaysia.
Approximately 30,000 lives are cut short in the U.S. each year due to pollution from electricity production. (ABT Associates study)
About 81 tons of mercury are emitted into the atmosphere each year as a result of electric power generation. Mercury is the most toxic heavy metal in existence. (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)
Burning fossil fuels to produce energy releases carbon dioxide and other global-warming-causing gases into the atmosphere.
Global warming will increase the incidence of infectious diseases (including equine encephalitis and Lyme disease), death from heat waves, blizzards, and floods, and species loss. (Chivilan and Epstein, Boston Globe, April 10, 1997)
Human activities have caused a dramatic increase in the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the earth's atmosphere. The main causes of increasing CO2 concentrations are the burning of fossil fuels — coal, petroleum products, natural gas — and deforestation.
Since about 1750, the concentration of CO2 has risen from about 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to reach 377 ppmv in 2004 — a value that has likely not been exceeded during the past 20 million years.
In 2000, CO2 emissions from fuel combustion have increased by approximately 10% compared with FY1990,
Carbon emissions in North America reached 1,760 million metric tons in 1998, a 38 % increase since 1970. They are expected to grow another 31 %, to 2,314 million metric tons, by the year 2020. (U.S. Department of Energy)
On average, 16 million tons of carbon dioxide are emitted into the atmosphere every 24 hours by human use worldwide.
1995 was the warmest year since global temperatures were first kept in 1856.
Emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases are causing global warming. (Chivilan and Epstein, Boston Globe)
The IPCC's Third Assessment Report (2001) concluded that if no explicit action is taken to curb GHG emissions from human activities, the global average surface temperature is projected to increase by 1.4 to 5.8°C between 1990 and 2100.
The global climate change is actually much more complicated than to a warmer summer, because a change in the temperature can cause changes in other weather elements such as clouds or precipitation.