Student ID: 80005 Critical Evaluation of Psychological Adaptation as a Factor for Determining Thermal Comfort in Public Outdoor Spaces in Dubai دراسة أزمة التطابق النفسي كعامل لتحديد الراحة من حيث درجة الحرارة في اﻷماكن العامة الخارجية في دبى By Maryam Behzadi Tehrani Student ID# 80005 Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of MSc Sustainable Design of the Built Environment Faculty of Engineering & IT May 2011 Dissertation Supervisor Dr. Moshood Olawale Fadeyi i Student ID: 80005 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to Dr. Moshood Olawale Fadeyi for the constant guidance and moral supervision given to me during preparation and completion of this study. As my supervisor, he patiently supported and encouraged me to remain focused and to make the research study more resourceful. The comments and observations made by him were very valuable and helped me to attain the research objectives and goals fruitfully and were able to add more quality to the research outcome. This dissertation would not have been achievable without his enormous appreciable support and I will never forget his encouragement. i Student ID: 80005 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................................. i TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................................. ii ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................................... v LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................................... vii LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... viii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Background of the Study ............................................................................................... 2 1.3 Motivation of the Study ................................................................................................ 7 1.4 Significance of the Study .............................................................................................. 9 1.5 Outline .......................................................................................................................... 10 CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW ...................................................................................... 12 2.1 Thermal Comfort and its Relevance .......................................................................... 12 2.1.1 Factors Influencing Thermal Perception and Comfort ........................... 14 2.1.2 Indoor and Outdoor Thermal Comfort ..................................................... 16 2.2 Climate Tourism and Thermal Comfort ................................................................... 18 2.2.1 Impact of Microclimate on the Usage of Outdoor Spaces ........................ 21 2.2.2 Behavioral Adaptation ............................................................................... 23 2.2.3 Physiological Adaptation ............................................................................ 25 2.2.4 Psychological Adaptation ........................................................................... 26 ii Student ID: 80005 2.3 Thermal Comfort and Design of Outdoor Spaces ................................................... 27 2.4 Knowledge Gap ........................................................................................................... 30 2.5 Research Question ...................................................................................................... 31 2.6 Research Aims and Objectives ................................................................................... 31 CHAPTER 3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ......................................................................... 32 3.1 Study Area and Justification ..................................................................................... 32 3.2 Objective Measurement ............................................................................................. 34 3.2.1 Instrumentation .......................................................................................... 35 3.2.2 Physical Parameters ................................................................................... 36 3.2.3 Limitation of measurement ........................................................................ 38 3.3 Subjective Measurement ............................................................................................ 39 3.3.1 Design of Questionnaire ............................................................................. 39 3.3.2 Sample Size .................................................................................................. 40 3.3.3 Method of Conducting the Survey ............................................................ 41 3.3.4 Limitation of measurement ......................................................................... 42 3.4 Expert-Walkthrough .................................................................................................. 43 3.5 Limitation of the Study .............................................................................................. 44 CHAPTER 4. RESULTS ............................................................................................................... 46 4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 46 4.2 Findings ....................................................................................................................... 46 4.2.1 Zabeel park ................................................................................................ 47 4.2.2 Creek Park .................................................................................................. 57 4.2.3 Safa Park ..................................................................................................... 64 iii Student ID: 80005 4.2.4 Mushrif Park ............................................................................................... 71 4.2.5 Jumeirah Beach Park ................................................................................. 78 4.2.6 Al Mumzar Beach Park .............................................................................. 88 4.2.7 JBR Walk .................................................................................................... 96 4.2.8 Marina Walk ............................................................................................. 104 4.3 Summary of the Results ........................................................................................... 112 CHAPTER 5. DISCUSSION ...................................................................................................... 116 5.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 116 5.2 Major Findings and Discussion ............................................................................... 117 5.2.1 Factors Influencing Thermal Comfort ................................................... 117 5.2.2 Psychological Adaptation and Thermal Comfort .................................. 121 CHAPTER 6. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................... 125 6.1 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 125 6.2 Recommendations ...................................................................................................... 127 6.2.1 Recommendations for Further Research ................................................ 129 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................... 131 APPENDIX 1. Thermal comfort questionnaire ................................................................. 140 APPENDIX 2. The Questioner Noted by Researcher ....................................................... 143 APPENDIX 3. Major parks and walkways in Dubai ....................................................... 145 APPENDIX 4. Major walkways in Dubai ........................................................................... 146 APPENDIX 5. Photographs of the different surveyed locations .................................... 147 iv Student ID: 80005 ABSTRACT High degrees of competition and globalization in fact made it imperative for nations to adopt systematic methods at the various stages of developmental planning in order to create or improve the designs for the benefit of the people, society, region, economy and environment. It is seen that comfortable outdoor spaces play a part in improving the quality of life particularly in urban areas. As thermal comfort form a decisive factor in influencing the utility value of spaces, evaluations on the user preferences and associated aspects would be beneficial in rightly categorizing and designing outdoor spaces. So the current research study was conducted for the purpose of exploring the role of psychological adaptation in estimating