Discussion of the Master's Thesis Titled
"The Impact of Environmental Treatments on the Sustainability of Green Open Spaces in Residential Complexes: A Case Study"
On Sunday, January 5, 2025, the master's thesis of Hajar Kamil Kareem, titled "The Impact of Environmental Treatments on the Sustainability of Green Open Spaces in Residential Complexes: A Case Study", was discussed.
The thesis focused on sustainable environmental treatments for green open spaces in residential complexes within hot and arid climates, providing the designer with flexibility in selecting the most crucial treatments to achieve environmental goals, in addition to other design aspects. The study aimed to provide flexibility in choosing among various environmental treatments that improve thermal comfort in open spaces in hot and dry climates while ensuring the sustainability of outdoor spaces in residential complexes.
To achieve this, the study proposed several treatments and design scenarios to improve the performance of outdoor spaces. These included 8 scenarios:
- Current situation scenario
- Master plan scenario
- Vegetation cover scenario
- Paving materials scenario
- Paving color scenario
- Water surface scenario
- Solar cells scenario
- Solar cells and vegetation cover scenario
These scenarios offer flexibility for the designer to choose the most suitable one for their design project, ensuring thermal efficiency and meeting other design requirements. A computational program (ENVI-met 5.5) was used to simulate environmental treatments for outdoor spaces and measure the environmental performance of various urban models. This allowed for comparing the climatic mitigation effects. Additionally, the PVsyst 7.4 software was used to simulate solar cell performance, considering direction, location, and energy production.
The study concluded several significant findings, including:
- Some environmental treatments helped improve thermal comfort, with results aligning with international standards. For example, the PET index reached a value of 8.68, the UTCL index was 7.41, the TA index was 7.04, and the PMV index was 1.68.
The discussion committee was composed of esteemed professors:
- Assoc. Prof. Dr. Rana Mazen Mahdi – (Chair)
- Assoc. Prof. Dr. Khawla Kareem Kothar – (Member)
- Assoc. Prof. Dr. Haider Jassim Issa – (Member)
- Assoc. Prof. Dr. Younis Mahmoud Mohammed Salim – (Supervisor & Member)
