Abstract

Water bodies play a significant role in itssurrounding thermal environment. Thermal comfort inuniversity spaces is critical that affects the students’ health andperformance as well as the staffs. This study investigatedthermal environment and comfort near lakeside andnon-lakeside tropical university spaces. Standard EffectiveTemperature (SET*) have been calculated using recorded airtemperature, relative humidity, globe temperature, air velocity,clothing insulation and metabolic rate to evaluate the thermalcomfort in outdoor and indoor spaces. The effects of weatherparameters have been clearly visible on the comfort index. Thecalculated SET* values indicate that the outdoor thermalcomfort near a lake is much closer to the standard comfort zonethan non-lakeside outdoor space. In the case of indoor thermalcomfort, however, slightly a different scenario has beenobserved. To achieve the desirable indoor thermal environment,some design considerations are recommended based onfindings.