Comfort temperature and occupant adaptive behavior in offices in Qatar during summer

Abstract

Qatar tops the world in per capita CO2 emissions and per capita total primary energy supply. Adaptive comfort standards and thermal comfort field survey data are not available for Qatar. We conducted a thermal comfort survey in Doha, Qatar, for five summer months in 2016. In nine typical randomly selected air-conditioned office buildings, 828 subjects returned 1926 questionnaires. We found 24.1 °C as Griffiths comfort temperature. Subjects mostly felt cooler sensation (mean: −0.23). Fanger’s Predicted Mean Vote always overestimated the actual sensation. We recorded very low to near still air conditions in all the indoors (mean speed: 0.04 m/s.) While 39.1% occupants felt neutral, 72.1% voted in the central band of the sensation scale and 85% accepted the environments. The occupants adapted through clothing. Clothing insulation significantly varied with air temperature. Public buildings are significantly cooler than the private buildings, and yet are less acceptable throughout the survey.