heat stress

Heatwaves are often responsible for many deaths due to high temperature indoors. Energy savings is a key element in building design and refurbishment works to reduce the impact of climate change. Natural ventilation is often promoted as an indoor space cooling solution thanks to its energy saving potential.
The paper deals with prediction of heat-related health risks situations in naturally ventilated dwellings.

The quality of indoor environments influences satisfaction, health, and work performance of occupants. Additional understanding of the theoretical and practical value of individual indoor parameters in relation to health and performance aids indoor climate designers to obtain desired outcomes. This also results in expenditure savings and increased revenue as well as health care and improved productivity. This paper reports on two experiments that investigated how heat, cooling strategy and background noise influence performance in a full-scale classroom mockup setting.

The enhancement of the know-how of the thermal environment has leaded to the formulation of more rational methods for the evaluation of the thermal responses of people. Nevertheless the improvement in human body heat exchange modelling resulted in more complex algorithms making difficult an easy assessment of thermal environments, especially for the beginners. Moreover the assessment interpretation according to the regulations in force is not trivial.