Gulala Aziz is from Kurdistan- Iraq. She has a bachelor’s degree in architectural engineering from Salahaddin University, Iraq. She has also completed my master’s degree M.Sc. in Sustainable planning and neighborhood development from Sulaimani Polytechnic University, Iraq. Her master’s research was about neighborhood sustainable development (NSA) in developing countries.
She worked for a year and a half as an architect designer at (HFU Org. United Nations, Erbil, Iraq), for a rehabilitation project for low income people. She has also worked as an architect for 5 years at the Raparin University campus in Kurdistan-Iraq.
Gulala moved to UK at the end of 2019. She is currently a PhD student at the Built Environment, Engineering, and computing at Leeds Becket University.
Title of her PhD project:
Developing a Sustainable Management Tool for Damp Control in Residential Buildings
Brief description of the project:
Damp is a serious problem in many buildings, accounting for more than half of all recorded building defects worldwide. In Europe alone, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that 10-50% of properties have damp indoor conditions. As well as endangering the integrity of materials, damp and mould affects the health of occupants and the building envelope’s energy efficiency. Damp and mould are therefore an important societal issue. However, reducing damp and mould presents a challenge as it is dependent on multitude of complex variables, including moisture production, building envelope, occupancy rates, ventilation, and heating regimes. The main aim of this study is to develop a sustainable management tool (SMT) to trace, control, and avoid current and future damp without accidentally causing further moisture damage.
The SMT must be effective, accurate, easy to use, energy- efficient, and cost-effective. The SMT should be able to both identify damp risk and recommend actions to be taken in each case to solve the issues. It is further expected that the SMT can quantify, assess, and analyse the key characteristic of all damp types for the affected buildings based on its characteristic, such as building type, building age and envelope area. This management tool will guide practitioners and surveyors to control the existing damp in their properties and guide the housing industry to avoid damp in future residential buildings. The research design will incorporate three phases: – 1. Case studies in which data on building characteristic, occupant behaviours and damp levels will be analysed. 2. Questionnaire surveys in which damp experts will be approached for their input on how damp can be mitigated against. 3. In situ experiments in which interventions will be implemented and tested.
This study is collaborative project between The Leeds Sustainability Institute (LSI) in the School of Built Environment, Engineering, and computing. Damp, Condensation and Mould diagnostics Research Group, Property Care Association. The damp and mould group from Chorus Home part of Place for People (PfP), Housing association.
Supervisors: Dr Matthew Brooke-Peat (Director of Studies), Dr Adam Hardy (Supervisor), Dr Paula Lopez-Acre (External Advisor from Property Care Association), Mark Winstanley (External Advisor from Places for People)