scholarly journals Case study assessment for natural ventilation performance of heritage buildings in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria (Egypt)

Author(s):  
Ahmed K Taher ◽  
Oriel Prizeman ◽  
Bakr Gomaa ◽  
Simon Lannon
Heritage ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed Khalil ◽  
Naglaa Hammouda ◽  
Khaled El-Deeb

Sustainable design is believed to stand on the opposite side of heritage conservation. This view is supported by the fact that sustainable design requires invasive measures to implement new technologies and treatments that challenge the principle of minimum intervention in heritage conservation. Another point of view sees heritage conservation as an already act of sustainable development that protects and preserves social and cultural resources such as heritage buildings and their intangible values. On the other hand, research and practice have proven that heritage buildings can be the subjects of sustainable design projects that achieve outstanding measures of sustainability and energy efficiency while not compromising the authenticity of the heritage value of the building. This sustainable conservation reaches its peak in adaptive-reuse projects of heritage buildings as reusing the building guarantees its ongoing maintenance and promotes its social, cultural and economic values to society, while giving it the ability to withstand modern users’ comfort and energy efficiency standards. This research presents a case study of the adaptive-reuse project of Villa Antoniadis in Alexandria; a heritage building built in the mid-nineteenth century and in the process of a major adaptive-reuse project. The history and significance of the building will be studied as well as the conservation values of the current project, then some proposals for interventions that could achieve more energy efficiency for the project while conserving the building are discussed. The research included a simulation of the building, using building energy modelling software for the current adaptive-reuse project as a base case, and the hypothetical application of different proposed sustainable interventions such as thermal insulation, double glazing, shading, lighting control, natural ventilation, and photovoltaic energy generation, where the energy savings potentials for each proposed intervention were studied. The simulation proved a possible reduction of 36.5% in the cooling, heating and lighting energy consumption as well as generated 74.7% of the energy required for cooling, heating and lighting from renewable energy sources.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 141-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed Mahdi

This article examines the claim that Israel’s natural gas exports from its Mediterranean gas fields will give geopolitical leverage to Tel Aviv over the importing countries. Using the geoeconomic tradition of Klaus Knorr and others who wrote about applying leverage using economic resources to gain geopolitical advantage, it is argued that certain criteria have to be satisfied for economic influence attempts, and that Israel’s gas exports do not satisfy these criteria. They include the importer’s supply vulnerability, the supplier’s demand vulnerability, and the salience of energy as an issue between both countries. Israeli gas exports to Egypt are used as a case study.


Author(s):  
Peter Behnstedt ◽  
Manfred Woidich

This chapter deals with the sedentary dialects of Egypt, excluding the bedouin dialects of Sinai and the Libyan bedouin dialects on the Mediterranean coast. It attempts to combine historical information on the settlement of Arabic tribes in Egypt with accounts of present-day Egyptian dialects and those of the regions from which those tribes came, initially Yemen and the Levant, later Hejaz, and then the Maghreb. The diversity of the Egyptian Arabic dialect area is partly explained by external factors, namely different layers of arabization over centuries. It is also explained by internal factors, namely dialect contact, which implies phenomena such as hyperdialectisms. Egypt is seen as a dialect area in its own right, but one that shows phenomena of a transitional area between the Arab East and West. A case study of Alexandria deals with dialect death. The role of substrata is discussed, but is considered negligible.


Author(s):  
Anvar Safarov Normatovich ◽  
Dong Wei ◽  
S G Dalibi ◽  
I I Danja ◽  
A A Mukhtar ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4563
Author(s):  
Nuno Baía Baía Saraiva ◽  
Luisa Dias Dias Pereira ◽  
Adélio Rodrigues Gaspar ◽  
José Joaquim da Costa

The adaptation of spaces to different usage typologies can be complex in heritage buildings. Facilities were initially planned for a specific type of use that, when changed, require additional measures to ensure a suitable indoor environment. Passive strategies—e.g., free cooling—are commonly used as an alternative without requiring equipment installation. However, its implementation often leads to unsatisfactory conditions. Therefore, it is important to clarify the main barriers to achieving thermal comfort in readapted historic buildings. The present work investigates the thermal comfort conditions reported by workers in office spaces of a historic building in the University of Coimbra. A monitoring campaign was carried out between May and September 2020 to assess indoor conditions’ quality. Due to the current pandemic of COVID-19, offices were not occupied at full capacity. A one-day evaluation of thermal comfort was made using a climate analyzer and six occupants were surveyed on 19 August 2020. The main results highlighted discomfort due to overheating of spaces. The causes were related to the combination of inadequate implementation of the free cooling actions and the building use. Furthermore, it was recommended the installation of HVAC systems in case of full capacity.


Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 259
Author(s):  
Ádám László Katona ◽  
István Ervin Háber ◽  
István Kistelegdi

A huge portion of energy consumption in buildings comes from heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. Numerous previous works assessed the potential of natural ventilation compared to mechanical ventilation and proved their justification on the field. Nevertheless, it is a major difficulty to collect enough information from the literature to make decisions between different natural ventilation solutions with a given situation and boundary conditions. The current study tests the passive air conduction system (PACS) variations in the design phase of a medium-sized new winery’s cellar and production hall in Villány, Hungary. A computational fluid dynamics simulation based comparative analysis enabled to determine the differences in updraft (UD) and downdraught (DD) PACS, whereby the latter was found to be more efficient. While the DD PACS performed an air change range of 1.02 h−1 to 5.98 h−1, the UD PACS delivered −0.25 h−1 to 12.82 h−1 air change rate. The ventilation performance of the DD version possessed lower amplitudes, but the distribution was more balanced under different wind incident angles, thus this version was chosen for construction. It could be concluded that the DD PACS provides a more general applicability for natural ventilation in moderate climates and in small to medium scale industry hall domains with one in- and one outlet.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 201
Author(s):  
Pau Chung Leng ◽  
Gabriel Hoh Teck Ling ◽  
Mohd Hamdan Ahmad ◽  
Dilshan Remaz Ossen ◽  
Eeydzah Aminudin ◽  
...  

The provision requirement of 10% openings of the total floor area stated in the Uniform Building By-Law 1984 Malaysia is essential for natural lighting and ventilation purposes. However, focusing on natural ventilation, the effectiveness of thermal performance in landed residential buildings has never been empirically measured and proven, as most of the research emphasized simulation modeling lacking sufficient empirical validation. Therefore, this paper drawing on field measurement investigates natural ventilation performance in terraced housing with an air-well system. The key concern as to what extent the current air-well system serving as a ventilator is effective to provide better thermal performance is to be addressed. By adopting an existing single-story air-welled terrace house, indoor environmental conditions and thermal performance were monitored and measured using HOBO U12 air temperature and humidity, the HOBO U12 anemometer, and the Delta Ohm HD32.3 Wet Bulb Globe Temperature meter for a six-month duration. The results show that the air temperature of the air well ranged from 27.48 °C to 30.92 °C, with a mean relative humidity of 72.67% to 79.25%. The mean air temperature for a test room (single-sided ventilation room) ranged from 28.04 °C to 30.92 °C, with a relative humidity of 70.16% to 76.00%. These empirical findings are of importance, offering novel policy insights and suggestions. Since the minimum provision of 10% openings has been revealed to be less effective to provide desirable thermal performance and comfort, mandatory compliance with and the necessity of the bylaw requirement should be revisited.


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