Dynamic analysis for daylight availability in high-density residential area of north-east China

Nowadays the increasing urbanization in north-east china has speeded up the growth of populations in several centre cities like Harbin, Changchun and Shenyang. The city managers have to constantly regenerate old zones and planned more new zones for constructing residential buildings. In order to build as more buildings as possible in certain plots, the limits concerning building height and distance with neighbour buildings are often broken so that more and more high-density residential areas have occurred. This has actually brought a very serious problem for living environment: lack of sunlight and daylight for building users. It is required to investigate the daylight availability in high-density residential area of north-east china. In this study a dynamic analysis method was utilized in analysing daylight availability of such environment. In contrast to traditional static concept based on Daylight Factor and sunlight duration, this method introduced Daylight Coefficient and Perez sky luminance function, which can dynamically achieve the annual daylight level profile on the external surfaces of buildings. Based on the local meteorological data, the new method responded to the real climate conditions of north-east china (weather zones I). Three typical built layouts were modelled and daylight availability of them was assessed. Several factors influencing daylight level distributions in the high-density residential environment have also been found. The proposed methodology could help urban and building designers evaluate the possibilities of using natural lighting in high-density area from the early conceptual design stages.