Publications
The team's research has been featured in industry publications including Health Estates Journal, which published a detailed feature on the project in February 2010. Recent refereed academic publications are as follows:
Lomas, K.J., Giridharan, R., Short, C.A., and Fair, A.J. (2012), 'Resilience of "Nightingale" hospital wards in a changing climate', Building Services Engineering Research and Technology, pp. 81-103.
This paper presents work relating the 'Nightingale' wards at Bradford Royal Infirmary. Built in the late 1920s, these wards are the classic pre-war UK type, with beds ranged along both sides of an open dormitory featuring high ceilings and cross-ventilation. Monitored data demonstrates good performance in the current climate. A series of refurbishment options is discussed, by means of which future resilience can be increased. The options are modelled using the UKCIP projections. What might be regarded as an archaic and redundant hospital building type, problematic in its plan geometry, reveals a degree of resilience to summertime overheating. The narrow sections, high floor to ceiling heights, and the potential for cross ventilation, plus the mass inherent in the masonry and concrete construction, deliver the basic resilience. Health and safety concerns in the restriction of opening areas have compromised this quality to some extent but perhaps more appropriate control strat- egies can boost or enhance the innate resilience of the type. Trusts may wish to review the expected life of these buildings, which make up a significant proportion of the 22% of NHS hospital buildings that pre- date 1948.
Lomas K.J. and Giridharan R. (2012),'Thermal comfort standards, measured internal temperatures and thermal resilience to climate change of free-running buildings: a case-study of hospital wards', Building and Environment (in press)
This paper illustrates how field measurement, thermal modelling and the generation of current and future typical and extreme weather years, can be used to provide a picture of the resilience of buildings to climate change. The unified framework for assessing both measurements and current and future predictions that is offered by the BSEN15251 thermal comfort standard is a crucial component. The paper focuses on internal temperatures during the day and at night in wards within the tower building at Addenbrooke's hospital, which has a hybrid ventilation strategy. The maintenance of thermal comfort in such spaces is critically important and installing air-conditioning in response to climate change is expensive and potentially energy intensive. Fans appear to be a simple retrofit measure that may substantially improve the buildings resilience to climate change even in extreme years. Whilst health care provides the back cloth, the methodology developed has a much wider utility for assessing thermal comfort in buildings in the current and future climate of the UK.
Eckert, C.M., Stacey, M., Wyatt, D., and Garthwaite, P. (2012), 'Change as little as possible: creativity in design by modification', Journal of Engineering Design http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09544828.2011.639299
While design research has concentrated on creativity in the early phases of design and on creativity in very open-ended design tasks, in practice many design projects concern the modification or incremental development of existing systems to meet new needs and restrictions. Some projects adopt a process of defining, prioritising and propagating requirements and constraints that bypasses conceptual design as it is conventionally understood. However, incremental development requires creative design to deal with multiple conflicting requirements, both in early design and in solving later local problems: the challenge lies in finding a satisfactory solution while avoiding a cascade of changes to the rest of the system. This paper draws on two case studies, one of the design of a new generation of diesel engines and one of the refurbishment of a hospital ward, to argue that in these domains creativity is required to find designs that change as little as possible and meet the given requirements with minimal effort.
Other relevant recent publications:
Short C.A., Al-Maiyah S. (2009) 'Design Strategy for low energy ventilation and cooling of hospitals' Building Research and Information, (2009) 37(3), 1-29. doi: 10.1080/09613210902885156
What is the potential for incorporating low-energy ventilation and cooling strategies into the design of new hospitals? How would such strategies cope with a changing climate? Natural ventilation is promoted by the UK National Health Service (NHS) in its recently launched carbon reduction strategy. NHS energy targets are reviewed in the context of UK national and international targets. Examination of the targets suggests customary environmental design strategies for new hospitals will not deliver the performance required. Perceived barriers to the implementation of more naturally driven environments in healthcare buildings are discussed, particularly the risk of air-borne cross- infection. Environmental design propositions for specific clinical and non-clinical space-types are created, catalogued, and aggregated into a typical plan component, their ventilation and energy performance modelled and factored to the scale of a 200-bed hospital to current NHS service delivery policies. The exercise suggests 70% of net floor area of small-to-medium-sized acute hospitals could be naturally ventilated. A hybrid ventilation strategy may serve a further 10% of net floor area. Patients and staff may benefit from more naturally sustained environments. Indications of the predicted comparative energy performance, potentially reduced to 38 MJ/100 m3, and capital and life cycle costs are provided.
Short, C.A., Cook, M., Cropper, P.C. and Al-Maiyah, S. (2009) 'Low Energy refurbishment strategies for health buildings' Journal of Building Performance Simulation.
Public health buildings contribute significantly to UK carbon emissions. New build initiatives have received more attention than the considerable opportunities to reduce carbon emissions within the retained health estate. The research reported here has considered the environmental performance of a typical medium rise, medium depth, concrete-framed, late 1960s acute hospital following low energy environmental design interventions. The interventions are made to optimize daylighting and natural ventilation/cooling whilst reducing overheating caused by summer time solar gains. Three options are investigated: advanced natural ventilation using plena and exhaust stacks; fan-assisted natural ventilation in which fans are used in the exhaust stacks; and mechanical ventilation/cooling with heat recovery. Computer simulations have been carried out to predict the influence on thermal performance (overheating risk) and energy consumption of each of these options on the original design. For each case, current weather data, and future weather data for the years 2020, 2050 and 2080, have been used.