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Indoor air quality (IAQ) is increasingly accepted as a leading factor in human health, and the ventilation of our indoor spaces is a key modifier of IAQ as the principal means by which indoor pollutants are diluted. Knowledge of the ventilation rate is essential for understanding and modelling our indoor environment, yet quantifying the ventilation rate for regular operational spaces remains a challenge.

The field of building ventilation and indoor air quality (IAQ) often employs indoor CO2 concentrations as an indicator of outdoor air ventilation rates and, in some cases, as a contaminant impacting human health and comfort. Many of these applications require CO2 emission rates from building occupants (VCO2), which can be predicted based on occupant characteristics (e.g., body mass, sex, age) and activity level (e.g., sleeping, exercise, resting). In some applications, this information is fairly well known.

The need of maximum airtightness is essential in order to ensure that the fire compartment can maintain the required concentration of suppression gas for a specified duration and effectively suppress or extinguish a fire. In Greece there are many facilities with requirements for a high-level protection, but until today, most (if not all) of them have not any integrity test certification. They are complacent by the certifications of the materials applied and the only way to confirm the effectiveness of the room’s integrity is when a fire will take place. 

Thermally activated building systems (TABS) are gaining attention as a means of realizing comfort and energy efficiency in office spaces. TABS use the building mass for heat dissipation and the storage part of the building to save energy, improve comfort, and shift peak energy consumption. However, the thermal response is slow due to the large thermal capacity.

Steady state and dynamic simulations tools based on current ISO standards play a crucial role in designing thermal envelopes that are robust and minimise risks of interstitial and surface condensation. These tools can also be used in a forensic way when supplemented by environmental and material data from site to analyse building failure.

In recent years, the adoption of water-based radiant ceiling cooling systems has been increasing in Japan with the aim of realizing comfort and energy savings. Conventionally, when designing radiant cooling systems, the target operative temperature for the indoor thermal environment is set, but these are usually combined with convection air conditioning system, which do not always achieve the target value during summer cooling.

This paper presents an analysis of the resilience to climate change of a direct adiabatic cooling system integrated within an industrial building. The system is a solution that utilizes humidified porous material to lower the air temperature without requiring external energy. In this study, the system is evaluated for two typical climate periods (historical and future) for a Mediterranean climate, using indicators of energy performance, thermal comfort and water consumption.

The global rise in average outdoor air temperatures has led to a significant increase in the demand for cooling energy in recent years. The development of resilient air-cooling systems capable of handling extreme heat events is essential to achieve the aim of Nearly Zero Energy Buildings. Ventilative cooling technologies based on indirect evaporative cooling systems are considered a sustainable solution in terms of indoor air quality and energy performance. 

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant emphasis on improving indoor air quality (IAQ), particularly within hospital buildings. Despite developments in integrated central advanced mechanical ventilation and filtration technologies in new hospital buildings, challenges persist in installing them in existing and old hospital buildings relying on traditional natural ventilation.

The global demand to improve the energy performance of buildings has led to greater air tightness and uncertainty in the ability of natural ventilation to maintain adequate indoor environmental quality. A monitoring campaign was carried out to evaluate the long-term indoor environmental quality across a year-long period in energy-efficient Irish dwellings.