APPRAISAL OF BUILDING CHANGES TO CLIMATE VARIABILITY IN ENUGU URBAN AREA

APPRAISAL OF BUILDING CHANGES TO CLIMATE VARIABILITY IN ENUGU URBAN AREA

Statement of the Research Problem

The effect of climate change is felt globally, however, Enugu state has experienced a lot of variations in climate. These include; increase in temperature (turning the city to a heat island), strong winds (that sometimes blow off roof tops), heavy rainfall, high sunshine intensity. The impact of climate change in the five decades includes building collapse, erosion, loss of land which could have been used for farming, construction or for industrialization. Notably, in 2017, third week of July after a heavy rainfall different locations experienced varying degrees of impact. The rainfall was unusual, it was prolonged, accompanied by heavy floods and strong winds. Houses around One Day area of Enugu South LGA were affected drastically, two building collapse were 5 recorded. Three lives were lost, there were obstructions of movement both for the pedestrian and the vehicles. That was quite devastating; and such occurrences were also noticed in Emene, and Akpaka. This happens every year at the peak months of rainfall (July-August). The flood depth in some areas were as much as three meters (3m) and there were other incidences recorded by ECTDA and NEMA. So far, much has been written on climate change in Enugu State, this includes the study of “Urban Heat Island Research of Enugu Urban” (Eneta, 2005). But no time series or trend analysis has been carried out to determine the changes in the climate parameters and their effects on building designs, building cost, maintenance cost, building materials and energy need. The varying changes in the climate parameters result in continuous changes in the design of buildings for the last five decades in a bid to combat these effects of climate change. This is to say that building designs have shifted over the decades. For example, considering the types of roofing materials used in the 1990s, which were corrugated roofing sheet (zinc), but was noted for poor thermal regulation making the internal environment uncomfortable and also causing an increase in the use of energy either to keep the internal enclosure warm or cool. The corrugated roofing sheet (zinc) was replaced by long aluminum roofing sheet. This was over taken by stone tiles. The stone tile is coated with natural stone that has better resistance to heat of sun preferred to ordinary galvanized steel roofing sheets. Roofing pattern has also changed from flat roofing pattern to high pitched roofing pattern which consumes more materials. Invariably, this increases costs both on materials and labour. In addition, the increase in temperature has resulted in the use of more energy. Again, energy employed in production and operations is still on the increase. Building materials, considering cement as an instance has continually increased in price, rising from about #1300 in 2014 to #2600 in 2016. Both the production of cement, transportation and use have negative impacts on buildings. They also, emit more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The problem remains that in as much as design, cost of production, maintenance and energy use are on the increase. It is very clear that all these are happening because the climate continues to change. Variations like excessive rainfall leads to high surface run off causing flooding. A typical example of this is 2012 flooding which destroyed buildings, lives, land and properties (National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), 2013)

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