adaptive opportunities

Despite being provided by mechanical ambient conditioning systems or not, all building have to a certain extent a degree of adaptation. Studies have shown that with either a weak or strong dependency to outdoor conditions there always are adaptive opportunities that might have a significant impact on comfort perception.

Building automation systems provide potential to optimise the energy consumption of buildings as well as to detect failures in the operation of buildings. Providing the occupants with control over the indoor environment is widely accepted to positively affect the occupant’s satisfaction. The system building-HVAC-automation-user is becoming more complex. So what does the term ‘perceived control’ really mean? Psychological constructs from social learning theory and personality psychology transferred to the field of personal control of the indoor environment will be discussed.

To ascertain comfort levels and effectiveness of available adaptive opportunities for classrooms in the hot-humid regions of India, a thermal comfort field study was conducted in an undergraduate laboratory class in Kharagpur. The study, carried out between January and April 2013, had participation from 121 students and yielded 338 responses. Analysis of the results showed that comfort temperatures found in the field study had close resemblance to the predicted comfort temperatures evaluated from certain existing standard adaptive comfort equations.