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Health-oriented sustainable buildings in the context of Qatar
With growing popularity of green building rating systems LEED and GSAS projects are becoming a building industry standard in Qatar. Furthermore more projects targeting higher rating in green building certification has become a trend. A large number of green buildings have been focused on in terms of energy and water efficiency where a high level of certification can be achieved and their performance can be easily translated and expressed into numeric terms. Media tends to highlight efficiencies in green buildings that are broadcasted as high-performance buildings. Although non-quantifiable benefits of green buildings such as enhanced occupant's productivity health and comfort are equally important emphasis on human factor has drawn relatively less attention to the green building design process. Considering the significance of cost incurred for building occupants in facility operation worker's wages and expenses are much higher than the utility cost or any other operation costs. Especially low energy and water tariffs in Qatar actually lower financial feasibility of high energy and water performance green buildings than those in other countries. In addition due to hot weather conditions in Qatar people spend more hours indoor than outdoor compared with other climate zone countries. In this regard building occupant's health and comfort should be more importantly treated in the context of green building in Qatar. According to a study on Qatari public health a large percentage of students in Qatar experience allergic diseases (asthma allergic rhinitis and eczema) and communicable diseases (influenza and hepatitis). Such diseases result in absenteeism and poor academic performance. Knowing that Doha was ranked the 12th worst ambient air quality in fine particles by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2014 prevalence of such diseases indicates that indoor environment is not sufficiently protected from polluted outdoor conditions. The diseases eventually burden the national healthcare cost to attend patients and potentially deteriorate Qatari businesses as well as education performance resulted from high absenteeism. This paper aims to first understand the level of the occupant's satisfaction in indoor air quality and thermal comfort based on a survey questionnaire for typical operating buildings in Qatar and strives to find the correlation between indoor environment quality in Qatari buildings and locally prevalent allergic and communicable diseases. The study finally aims to determine the root causes of health-related indoor environmental quality issues and to suggest improvements in design construction and operation of a green building implementation.
Qatar Climate Change Conference 2021
Extreme heatwaves and rising wet-bulb temperatures would damage the human habitability of vital urban centers in the Middle East by the end of the 21st century according to several published research documents particularly in some regions in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. This may result in widespread social and economic disruptions and challenges driven by climatic change impacts in the rapidly growing urban areas of the Middle East. Middle East countries expect to face the major impacts of global warming due to the vulnerability of critical urban systems and infrastructure and they are in necessity of developing climate change adaptation strategies to establish more robust urban centers resilient to climate change-driven events. Social and economic stability can be preserved by effectively preparing for the impending risks provided by climate change allowing growth in a changing environment.
The Qatar Climate Change Conference (QCCC) 2021 addressed key climate change topics of national importance to Qatar bringing together high-level representatives from the public and private sectors. Understanding that climate change is the most pressing challenge facing the world today the conference supports Qatar's ongoing contributions to global conversations around environmental policy and action.