Impact of Sustainable Buildings in Arid Environment on the Indoor and Outdoor Air Quality: Workshop Report

This workshop was designed to focus the discussions on the dynamic relationship between outdoor and indoor air quality communicated through the envelope of the buildings which is of great interest to Qatar and the gulf region. Building occupants in Qatar spend more than 80% of their time in indoor environments such as homes, workplaces, schools, malls, and other mixed-use buildings. Indoor air quality research and development efforts are much more critical today, as contamination from sick-building syndrome and viruses like COVID-19 are commonly spread by circulating indoor air. Within this context, indoor air quality directly impacts the occupants’ health and well-being. The topics discussed covered sustainable energy technologies, sustainable development in buildings, indoor and outdoor air quality, and the urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon. These research topic areas are most relevant to the State of Qatar as buildings represent the largest energy consumer of the country, and air quality is directly impacted by the anthropogenic activity from buildings including the UHI (Fountoukis et al., 2022²). Furthermore, meteorological phenomena such as the sea-breeze circulation in coastal urban environments may further complicate the intensity of UHI and the expected temperature anomalies (Ortiz et al., 2019³). The UHI represents the thermal gradient between the built environment and the natural landscape, typically manifested in higher temperatures in the city. This unbalanced thermal energy is responsible for increases in energy demand and the deterioration of the local outdoor air quality. There has been little research in those areas in a comprehensive manner to understand this feedback process in the context of arid coastal environments such as that of Qatar. Sustainable building energy technologies are essential in this paradigm to reduce energy consumption and the associated anthropogenic activity, and to have responsive capabilities to indoor and outdoor conditions. The connection between the sensible heat diffused by the high-rise buildings and latent heat associated with their centralized chillers facilities that provide the required cooling capacity for these buildings was addressed in the invited talks and the breakout discussions. Specifically, the impact of the latent heat on the urban heat island and outdoor air quality was addressed in the breakout sessions and during the panel discussions. The workshop created an excellent opportunity for local stakeholders from government, universities, research institutes, and policy enablers to actively engage with the leading international subject matter experts and prominent academics in technical discussions to evaluate the major challenges and potential opportunities in the fields of sustainable buildings and indoor and outdoor air quality. The outcomes of the breakout session discussions are outlined in this report and will benefit both local stakeholders and the international community in terms of new ideas, and potential collaborative research opportunities, and help decision-makers to make informed decisions on new regulations and future developments. Table 1 shows keynotes and invited talks who were instrumental in setting up the stage and motivating the participants for the planned discussions and exchanges. Table 2 displays the three breakout sessions included in this workshop.

Three breakout sessions were embedded in this workshop and strategically designed to deliver the objectives of this workshop. The workshop’s key objectives were as follows:

• Provide recommendations on new thematic research areas on sustainable buildings in hot and humid climates and their potential impact on indoor and outdoor air quality.

• Identify a minimum of three collaborative research topic areas.

• Invite and solicit participants LPIs, principal investigators (PIs), co-funding, and collaboration) to prepare and submit new research proposals.

• Produce a report on the workshop outcomes outlining the summary of breakout sessions, the identified thematic research areas including the extended abstracts, key recommendations on the next steps, and any other identified research collaboration opportunities between participants.

This workshop extended two and half days and provided a platform to close to 60 local and international participants, Fig. 1. The invited participants were from a diverse number of regional universities, partners, and stakeholders including Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Carnegie Mellon University-Qatar, Hamad Medical Corporation, Microsoft-GCC, Ministry of Public Health, Ooredoo Telecommunications Qatar (Ooredoo), Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC), multiple Qatar Foundation entities (Earthna, HSSE, City Operations), Qatar University, HBKU/QEERI, TASMU, Texas A&M University-Qatar, WISH-Qatar. The international participants represented a wide range of entities including Arizona State University, City College of New York, City University of New York, Cornell University, Drexel University, Imperial College London, New York University, National Renewable energy Laboratory (NREL), Texas A&M University-College Station, Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María-Chile, University of Colorado. They played a key role in this workshop bringing their expertise and experience to significantly strengthen the outcomes.

The breakout sessions utilized designed questionnaires to help keep the discussion focused on the selected topics of interest to Qatar and guide the participants to document their outcomes in a forward-looking report. Each breakout session was guided by two expert facilitators to prepare, guide, and manage the discussions between the participants and to make sure that the outcome of each breakout session is aligned with the workshop objectives. In addition, one note-taker is assigned to each breakout session to make sure that the contributions from all the participants are documented. The facilitators presented a summary of the two-day breakout session discussions on the third day of the workshop. The workshop included three breakout sessions in parallel, one for each of the three thematic areas: sustainable buildings & energy technologies, indoor air quality, and healthy connected-home and outdoor air quality & urban heat island. A group of 16–18 participants is assigned to each thematic area based on their relevant expertise and research interest. Each group meets over two sessions each day (one in the morning and one in the afternoon) over the first two days of the workshop.

Identified Challenges

• The schism between design and operations

• Lack of effective operational energy and sustainability key performance indicators (KPIs) enforcement

• Data privacy and accessibility concerns

• International standards not adapted to local conditions

• Lack of incentives for investment in a sustainable residential environment

• No carbon pricing

Identified Opportunities

• Emergent open data platforms

• Growing awareness about sustainable action

• Potential for adaptable and flexible buildings

• Potential for green roofs

• Photovoltaic (PV) options and customization

Potential Project Proposals

Project 1: Alternative Sustainable, Resilient, and Safe On-Site Power Generation for the Construction and Operation of Buildings

• This proposal aims to minimize dependency on diesel generators and evaluate the use of renewable on-site power generation.

Project 2: Advanced Air Filtration Options for AC Systems

• Evaluate air filtering options for AC systems and technologies using energy efficiency and air quality as metrics.

Project 3: Effectiveness of Landscaping and Greenery on Outdoor Air Quality and Energy Use of AC Systems

• Evaluate through modeling and field tests the impact of landscaping on the local outdoor climate conditions.

Project 4: Assessment of Air Leakage on Indoor Quality and Energy Efficiency of Residential Buildings

• This proposal is to assess the impact of air leakage on indoor air quality and energy consumption in residential buildings.

Project 5: Workshop and/or Working Group on Data Assessment on Building Stock in Qatar

• Develop an approach to increase awareness of the benefits of building data and identify current gaps in data availability.

Identified Challenges

• Lack of datasets on indoor air quality from the local context.

• Lack of linked datasets relating indoor air quality with behavioral patterns and health outcomes.

• Lack of cost-effective sensors for bioaerosol and toxic monitoring.

• Lack of data sharing.

• Lack of standards for healthy homes, building codes, etc.

Identified Opportunities

• Investigate the impact of almost doubling the state of Qatar’s population (over 1.5 million fans are expected to visit the country during the competition causing a shock to the system) on vital elements of the city, such as mobility, telecommunication services, building/district power consumption, emissions and localized air quality data, cellular phone activity, traffic data, airport activity, space-borne data, and if possible, drone imaging.

• Create a grand vision for a livable, smart city testbed in the Education City of Qatar.

• Develop a healthy building research strategy that looks at the interaction between multiple factors including public health, air quality, electrical/mechanical engineering, air conditioning system, regulatory policies, standards and best practices, and data accessibility sharing.

Potential Project Proposals

Project 1: View to the Future project

• During the Football world cup tournament, Doha will experience a population increase equivalent to 15 years of growth. This growth will result in a corresponding increase in energy consumption, emissions, and higher density of population and vehicular movement, and respective exposures, public health outcomes, and comfort levels. The project will result in data-informed agent-based models at fine resolution. The aim is to model the growth of Doha using changes that will occur during the 2022 World Cup. The model will include measures of the flow of people and vehicles, consumption of energy, emissions, environmental conditions (both outdoor and indoor), biometrics of a selected cohort of participants, as well as regional and local climate models and projections. These models will enable short-term planning and interventions in extreme events, and they will support long-term urban science.

Project 2: Education City Living Lab Working Group

• A vision for a livable smart city testbed that includes transportation, energy, environment, and health while incorporating the local context, and constraints and involving key local stakeholders.

Project 3: Healthy Home Project

• This is a proposal to monitor and evaluate indoor air quality to improve the indoor environment and improve comfort.

Identified Challenge

• Sea-breeze meteorology in Qatar and Doha in particular is a major driver for air quality under non-dust storm conditions.

• Existing environmental data is not readably available to Qatar’s researchers, limiting the capacity to further advance environmental research and associated social benefits.

• Hyper-local data localized “hot/cold” spots if leveraging traditional data sets/networks.

• While there are regional efforts in the GCC to provide accessible climate projections, the needs of local urban communities such as Doha may require more specificity and be more accessible to local stakeholders and needs, however, uncertainties may be a challenge.

Identified Opportunities

• Understand the diurnal and seasonal variability of Qatar, specifically penetration, depth and intensity, and relationship to the UHI, air quality, and dust events.

• Conduct research to understand the diurnal and seasonal variability of Qatar, specifically penetration, depth, intensity, and relationship to the UHI and air-quality events.

• Envision and develop an operational national environmental data warehouse that brings together existing networks and is accessible, transparent, and trusted. Further, expand existing networks with targeted hyper-local data networks for specific communities and/or purposes.

• Propose new methods for climate projections at city scales with the input of stakeholders. New methods include bias-corrected stat downscaling and dynamic downscaling.

• Capacity building in Qatar.

Potential Project Proposals

Project 1: Boundary-Layer Meteorology, Sea Breeze, and Air Quality in Qatar

• This proposal aims to improve current modeling capabilities using satellite images and ground measurements to help evaluate the impact of human exposure.

Project 2: Uniform and Accessible Environmental Data Warehouse for Qatar

• Envision and develop an operational national environmental data warehouse that is accessible, transparent, and trusted.

Project 3: The Doha Climate Projections and Assessment Project (DPCC)

• This proposal focuses on extreme air quality impacts, particularly on public health, energy demand, and water usage. Explore mitigation using nature-based solutions at the building scale.

The workshop participants identified multiple topic areas for future workshops and research collaborations. The following is a short list of these potential topics’ areas:

• Users’ workshops for the proposed Qatar Environmental Data Warehouse.

• Users and contributors’ workshop for Climate Assessment for Doha.

• Technical Collaboration Opportunities with the local stakeholders for the three key sectors of the economy: the built environment, industry, and transportation.

• A cluster research proposal idea on the education city as a livable city has been articulated and a team of researchers expressed interest in taking this idea forward.

• A team of researchers is investigating possible rapid funding from National Science Foundation (NSF) to capture the impact on the city infrastructure as a result of a rapid increase in population in a very short time during the FIFA World Cup tournament (DOHA2022).

• The workshop participants agreed that the atmospheric dynamics processes and the interactions affecting the urban built environment is an emerging research area. With the growth of cities around the world, there has been increasing interest in understanding how the urban built environment affects atmospheric processes and local air quality. The various interactions are captured by the schematic diagram shown in Fig. 2.

The workshop provided a premier interdisciplinary platform for local researchers, and enablers to engage and exchange knowledge and experiences with international leading practitioners and subject matter experts in the fields of sustainable buildings, indoor and outdoor air quality, and the urban heat island phenomena. The areas discussed are of great interest to the Gulf region in general and Qatar in particular. The workshop was organized in such a way that participants are effectively involved in breakout session discussions to achieve the best outcomes. Two facilitators managed the breakout session discussions and summarized the overall outcomes on the third day of the workshop. The report highlighted the workshop activities and lists the potential collaborative proposals and future workshop topics from each breakout session team. The workshop participants emphasized that healthy livable city research-related topics are of immediate priority in terms of research investment from both the local and international funding agencies. The research collaboration between the local and international researchers developed through this workshop will feed into the local research ecosystem and help strengthen our collective experiences.

• Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) (Award No. CWSP18-W-0203-20038; Funder ID: 10.13039/100008982).

There are no conflicts of interest.

No data, models, or code were generated or used for this paper.