Abstract:
With the urbanization and the rapid development more people have been moving towards cities in search of facilities. With this, demands for dwellings in the cities have increased and more buildings have been constructed, changing the previous arrangement of the cities. The cities have turned into congested areas with less vegetation and greenery. The more the urban spaces have become industrialized, the more the air has been contaminated. This research discusses the effect of surrounding vegetation on indoor air quality of dwellings by checking the difference of CO2 concentration based on actual measurement in Colombo, Kandy and Nuwara Eliya which are situated in three different altitudes, varying amount of vegetation and with largely varying traffic congestion.
The results obtained reveal that the effect of vegetation is very high in Colombo when compared to other two cities as the traffic congestion is very high there. In low greenery areas of Colombo, indoor CO2 concentration increases very rapidly in the evening when there isn’t much difference in other two cities. But the difference between mean indoor CO2 levels in greenery and low greenery area is decreasing significantly amongst Colombo, Kandy and Nuwara Eliya. This research indicates that the surrounding vegetation has more impact on indoor air quality in cities with high traffic congestion and low altitudes.
