Indoor Environmental Quality

Most current environmental control systems installed in buildings aim to create a uniform IEQ, disregarding the large interpersonal and intrapersonal variability in occupants’ thermal, visual, acoustics & air quality requirements. By creating occupant micro-environments that respond to individual preferences, and relaxing the surrounding space, personalized environmental control systems (PECS) can satisfy all occupants with relatively low-energy input.

Personalized Environmental Control Systems (PECS) have advantages of controlling the localized environment at occupants’ workstation by their preference instead of conditioning an entire room. A new IEA EBC Annex (Annex 87 - Energy and Indoor Environmental Quality Performance of Personalised Environmental Control Systems) has recently started to establish design criteria and operation guidelines for PECS and to quantify their benefits. This topical session will provide an introduction to the objective/scope, activities, and intended outputs of the annex.

Most New Zealand schools are designed to be naturally ventilated, using openable windows (Ministry of Education Design Quality Standard Guidelines). Furthermore, they must meet the New Zealand Building Code Clause G4 - Ventilation. Clause G4 requires the “net openable area of windows in a classroom to be no less than 5% of the combined habitable floor area to achieve sufficient ventilation”. Although they are designed to code, there is no end-user operational or systems requirement for them to be opened.

In recent years, naturally ventilated glass façades have become a common feature in the design and retrofit of large-scale non-residential buildings, integrating architectural aesthetics and energy efficiency. These façade systems are complex and multifaceted. Thus, introducing them in buildings poses many challenges from economic, engineering, health and behavioural perspectives that can reduce optimal building performance. Building occupant behaviour and preferences are important contributors to the gap between the predicted and actual building energy performance.

Considering all aspects of indoor environmental comfort (thermal, visual, acoustical and air quality) and their interactions, questionnaires aiming at detecting assess people's perception of indoor environmental quality (IEQ), well-being and satisfaction should be designed in a more homogeneous way. In particular, the choice of the questions, response options and scales adopted must satisfy consistency criteria between different IEQ areas, but also allow a direct correlation to specific measurable quantities.

Nowadays people spend an average of 87% of their time inside buildings. Schools are a particularly delicate type of buildings for several reasons. Firstly, their primary occupants such as children, boys and girls are more vulnerable than adults, and spend a large portion of their time in schools. Secondly, pupils, but also teachers and other school personnel have often little or no control on the indoor environmental quality (IEQ). Thirdly, school buildings are usually either old and cannot ensure an adequate IEQ (e.g.

This study aims at obtaining feedback from occupants of low-energy retrofitted houses concerning the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and the building systems in their homes. A questionnaire study was carried out in a social housing complex consisting of 2007 single-family houses, of which 1305 were retrofitted between 2014 and 2019. The different retrofitted houses were equipped with two types of heating systems, as well as balanced mechanical ventilation with two inlet locations.

Current building regulations are designed to ensure that buildings, including newly built and retrofitted residential dwellings, are more energy efficient. This has raised concerns and practical challenges in relation to maintaining acceptable indoor environmental and air quality. However, there are minimal data available regarding long-term indoor air pollutant concentrations in low-energy residential buildings.

As the energy poverty cannot afford the energy expenditure, their indoor environmental quality (IEQ) was affected by diverse problems from low energy efficient residential buildings. Thus, it is important to identify IEQ of energy poverty`s residential buildings to improve their well-being. However, there is no specific and diverse data on the IEQ of energy poverty in low-income housing in South Korea due to the difficulty of reaching many households and managing an amount of survey data.

Personalized Environmental Control Systems (PECS) condition the immediate surroundings of occupants, and they are expected to provide increased comfort, health, and productivity. Studies have reported on their benefits and limitations in addressing individual Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) factors, especially in terms of thermal comfort and indoor air quality. The COVID-19 pandemic and risks associated to climate change, such as heat waves, highlight the necessity for PECS that can address multiple IEQ factors.