Dissertations / Theses: 'Buildings indoor environments'

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Bylund, Melin Charlotte, and Mattias Legnér. "Quantification, the link to relate climate-induced damage to indoor environments in historic buildings." Högskolan på Gotland, Institutionen för kultur, energi och miljö, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hgo:diva-1879.

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This paper describes and applies a method to quantify and related damage of painted wooden pulpits in 16 churches in Gotland, Sweden, to both the current and the historical indoor climate of the twentieth century. In addition, it demonstrates that the energy used to heat a church in the past can be measured and the study alsopoints towards a relationship between damage and heat output. The results suggest that more damage is present in churches with a higher heat output and there is increased damage in churches using background heating compared to churches that do not. However, the method needs to be improved and a larger population is required to validate these results.
Climate for Culture
Cultural heritage and human comfort: the issue of indoor climate in historic buildings in the twentieth cnentury

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Pommer, Linda. "Oxidation of terpenes in indoor environments : A study of influencing factors." Doctoral thesis, Umeå University, Ecology and Environmental Science, 2003. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-29.

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In this thesis the oxidation of monoterpenes by O3 and NO2 and factors that influenced the oxidation were studied. In the environment both ozone (O3) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are present as oxidising gases, which causes sampling artefacts when using Tenax TA as an adsorbent to sample organic compounds in the air. A scrubber was developed to remove O3 and NO2 prior to the sampling tube, and artefacts during sampling were minimised when using the scrubber. The main organic compounds sampled in this thesis were two monoterpenes, alfa-pinene and delta-3-carene, due to their presence in both indoor and outdoor air. The recovery of the monoterpenes through the scrubber varied between 75-97% at relative humidities of 15-75%.

The reactions of alfa-pinene and delta-3-carene with O 3, NO2 and nitric oxide (NO) at different relative humidities (RHs) and reaction times were studied in a dark reaction chamber. The experiments were planned and performed according to an experimental design were the factors influencing the reaction (O3, NO2, NO, RH and reaction times) were varied between high and low levels. In the experiments up to 13% of the monoterpenes reacted when O3, NO2, and reaction time were at high levels, and NO, and RH were at low levels. In the evaluation eight and seven factors (including both single and interaction factors) were found to influence the amount of alfa-pinene and delta-3-carene reacted, respectively. The three most influencing factors for both of the monoterpenes were the O 3 level, the reaction time, and the RH. Increased O3 level and reaction time increased the amount of monoterpene reacted, and increased RH decreased the amount reacted.

A theoretical model of the reactions occurring in the reaction chamber was created. The amount of monoterpene reacted at different initial settings of O3, NO2, and NO were calculated, as well as the influence of different reaction pathways, and the concentrations of O3 and NO2, and NO at specific reaction times. The results of the theoretical model were that the reactivity of the gas mixture towards alfa-pinene and delta-3-carene was underestimated. But, the calculated concentrations of O3, NO2, and NO in the theoretical model were found to correspond to a high degree with experimental results performed under similar conditions. The possible associations between organic compounds in indoor air, building variables and the presence of sick building syndrome were studied using principal component analysis. The most complex model was able to separate 71% of the “sick” buildings from the “healthy” buildings. The most important variables that separated the “sick” buildings from the “healthy” buildings were a more frequent occurrence or a higher concentration of compounds with shorter retention times in the “sick” buildings.

The outcome of this thesis could be summarised as follows;

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Ljungquist, Katarina. "Probabilistic design for evaluation of indoor environment." Licentiate thesis, Luleå tekniska universitet, 2003. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:ltu:diva-18720.

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In recent years indoor environment and indoor air quality has been subjected to extensive worldwide research efforts. Still, at present there are a lack of methods for prediction of risks and consequences for any defined damage to occur, similar to the probabilistic methods used in modern design codes for structures and buildings. Such a method, if available and usable, could be very beneficial as a tool for decision making at different stages of the building process. In this licentiate thesis a method is developed to estimate the risk of occurrence of high radon concentrations indoors. The method is developed using risk analysis applied on a concrete slab on the ground, which is a foundation method commonly used in Sweden for residential buildings. The undesirable event is "Leakage of radon into the building" and fault tree analysis is used starting in the top with the undesirable event and then working downwards finding the events, which causes the top event. This procedure continues until basic events are established and for which failure probabilities are available. Fault tree analysis is a deductive method mainly used for systems built up with electronic equipment where failure probabilities in terms of relative frequency are easy to establish. Failure probabilities are more difficult to establish in the building process since failures are rare. However, this uncertainty can be handled by applying structural reliability analysis on the quantitative analysis whereas several random variables can be taken into account in a single analysis, which makes it possible to analyse a whole branch of a fault tree in a single analysis. The basis for structural reliability methods is probability theory to handle the uncertainties and Monte Carlo simulation and first-order second-moment theory to estimate the risk. To get an indoor environment that is unhealthy to human beings environmental impact is needed together with fault due to human error in some phase of the building process. Examples of faults made in the building process are changes and/or addition of work ordered by the proprietor, unsuitable design or delivery of wrong material to the construction site. Several surveys have come to the same conclusion that a large amount of faults made in the building process depends on e.g. insufficient commitment or lack of knowledge. However, the building could be designed and constructed according to the state-of-the art of knowledge and still has an improper function. Errors cannot be ruled out completely but the use of fault tree technique to develop the causes to an unhealthy indoor environment and the estimation of risk can be a valuable communication tool to the quality management system to get an overview of the entire building process and to identify the week links. The residential building used as an example in this work is situated outside the municipality of Linköping since long-term measurements of radon concentrations in soil air are available from this area. The building has a self-draught ventilation system and the design of the concrete slab, starting from the excavated rock floor, include a geotextile, 150 mm well washed macadam, 50 mm insulation, 100 mm reinforced concrete, a levelling compound and finally a flooring. The causes to radon concentrations indoor has been developed with fault tree analysis where "Leakage of radon contaminated soil air into the building", "Radon contaminated drinking water" and "Building material contains radium disintegrating to radon" constitute the main causes. The event "Leakage of radon contaminated soil air...." is developed further, since it is the major contributor to radon concentrations indoor, into the events "Lower air pressure indoor than outdoor", "Radon contaminated soil air under or around the building" and "Fault in component with regard to air-tightness". A function expressing the relationship between the basic events and their random variables is established and both Monte Carlo simulation and first-order second-moment theory is applied to estimate the probability and the safety index b for the undesirable event to occur. The leakage of radon-contaminated soil air has only been considered through fissures in the concrete slab and it has been difficult to find proper relationships between how fissures occur, fissure width, and concrete and reinforcement properties. Approximations have therefore become necessary. However, the simulation and the analytical calculation gives e.g. safety index beta = 0.30 on normal risk area, which is 70 % of the total area of Sweden, in residential buildings where people stay more than temporary. Comparison can be made with the safety index beta larger or equal to 4.3 for safety class 2 in the Swedish Design Regulations for the structure of residential buildings. In a residential building on normal risk area and designed in accordance with the concrete slab in this work, the probability for radon concentrations indoor to exceed the Swedish Building Regulations threshold value 200 Bq/m3 is over 40.000 times larger than the risk for structural failure.
Världen över bedrivs det omfattande forskning på inomhusmiljö och luftkvalitet. Trots det finns det fortfarande ingen metod för att bestämma sannolikheten för att någon form av definierad skada inträffar på inomhusmiljön med konsekvenser för människors hälsa på samma sätt som det finns metoder i moderna konstruktionsregler för att bestämma risken för mekanisk påverkan på byggnadskonstruktioner. Förekomsten av en sådan metod skulle vara ett viktigt instrument för miljöbeslut i alla led i byggprocessen.En metod har utvecklats i denna licentiatuppsats för att bestämma risken för att höga koncentrationer av radon skall förekomma i inomhusluften. Metoden har tagits fram genom att tillämpa riskanalys på en platta på mark som är en vanlig handläggningsmetod för bostadshus i Sverige. Orsakerna till den oönskade händelsen "Läckage av radon in i byggnaden" har kunnat härledas med hjälp av felträdsanalys genom att starta i toppen av trädet och arbeta sig nedåt. Proceduren upprepas tills primärhändelser erhålls för vilka sannolikheter kan bestämmas. Felträdsanalys är en deduktiv metod som är utvecklad för system som är uppbyggda av elektroniska komponenter och för vilka sannolikheter för fel i form av relativa frekvenser är enkla att bestämma. Det är svårare att bestämma sannolikheter för fel i byggprocessen eftersom varje objekt oftast är unikt. Denna osäkerhet kan dock hanteras genom att använda samma säkerhetsfilosofiska modell som används för mekanisk påverkan på bärande konstruktioner där hänsyn kan tas till flera stokastiska variabler i samma analys vilket gör det möjligt att ersätta en hel gren i ett felträd. För att hantera osäkerheter används den säkerhetsfilosofiska modellen för bärande konstruktioner sannolikhetsteori och för att bestämma risken kan Monte Carlosimuleringar och 'första ordningens nivå 2'-metod användas.För att få en ohälsosam inomhusmiljö behövs miljöpåverkan tillsammans med ett fel i byggnaden orsakat i något led av byggprocessen. Exempel på fel som kan medföra en ohälsosam inomhusmiljö är att byggherren ändrar eller gör kompletteringar i byggnaden, konstruktionen är olämpligt utförd eller att materialleveranser är felaktiga. Flera undersökningar har kommit fram till att t.ex. bristande engagemang eller bristande kunskap många gånger är orsakerna till de fel som uppkommer i byggprocessen. Bristande kunskap kan också bero på att kunskapen inte finns, dvs byggnaden utförs på ett riktigt sätt med avseende på den kunskap som finns. Fel kan aldrig elimineras helt men användandet av felträdsanalys för att ta fram orsakerna till en ohälsosam inomhusmiljö och bestämmandet av risken skulle kunna vara ett värdefullt verktyg i kvalitetssystem för att få en överblick över hela byggprocessen och för att kunna identifiera de svaga länkarna.Bostadshuset som exemplifieras i den här uppsatsen är beläget utanför Linköping eftersom det där har förekommit långtidsmätningar på radonhalten i marken. Byggnaden ventileras genom självdrag och grundplattans konstruktion består, med start från schaktbotten, av en geotextil, 150 mm vältvättad makadam, 50 mm isolering, 100 mm armerad betong, avjämningsmassa samt golvbeläggning. Orsakerna till radonkoncentrationer inomhus har bestämts genom felträdsanalys och består av "Läckage av radonhaltig jordluft", "Radonhaltigt dricksvatten" och "Byggnadsmaterialet innehåller radium som sönderfaller till radon". Den huvudsakliga orsaken till radon i inomhusluften är "Läckage av radonhaltig jordluft" och den utvecklas därför vidare och orsakas av "Lägre lufttryck inomhus än utomhus", "Jordluften under eller runt byggnaden innehåller radon" och "Fel i byggnadsdelen med hänsyn till lufttäthet". En funktion som beskriver förhållandet mellan de olika primärhändelserna och dess stokastiska variabler har tagits fram och genom att använda både Monte Carlo-simulering och första ordningens nivå 2-metod har sannolikheten samt säkerhetsindex β bestämts för att den oönskade händelsen skall inträffa.Hänsyn har bara tagits till läckage av radonhaltig jordluft genom sprickor i betongplattan och det har varit svårt att hitta lämpliga förhållanden mellan hur sprickor uppkommer, sprickvidd och betongens och armeringens egenskaper. Därför har antaganden gjorts i vissa fall. För normalriskmark, som 70 % av Sveriges yta består av, har simuleringarna och beräkningarna givit ett säkerhetsindex β = 0.30 för bostadshus där människor uppehåller sig mer än tillfälligt. En jämförelse kan göras med de svenska konstruktionsreglerna där bärande konstruktioner i ett bostadshus skall uppfylla säkerhetsklass 2 med ett säkerhetsindex β ≥ 4.3 för att ett bostadshus, byggt på normalriskmark med en platta på mark enligt denna uppsats, skall innehålla radonkoncentrationer över det svenska normgränsvärdet 200 Bq/m3, är alltså mer än 40.000 gånger större än risken för att den bärande konstruktionen inte skall hålla.

Godkänd; 2003; 20070217 (ysko)

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Coombs, Kanistha C. "The Indoor Environment of Green versus Non-Green Buildings." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1447070716.

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Adler, Stuart Alan. "Indoor air quality and architecture." Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/1853/23178.

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PITTANA, ILARIA. "The Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) and comfort in educational buildings." Doctoral thesis, Università degli studi di Padova, 2022. https://hdl.handle.net/11577/3460790.

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Differently from what occurs during laboratories studies, in educational buildings schools’ occupants are exposed at once to acoustical, thermal, visual, and air quality stimuli, and the effect of the indoor environment on students’ perception and performance depends on their combined effects. The present research deals with the assessment of the Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) in educational buildings by means of physical measurements (objective evaluation), questionnaire (subjective evaluation) and building model simulation and calibration. The work proposes different original methods for: the design of a standard subjective questionnaire consistent for the four comfort domains, i.e. IAQ, thermal, acoustic and visual environment (i); data collection, namely the monitoring of the main physical parameters related to the four comfort domains (ii) and the administration of the questionnaire (iii); data validation and analysis, namely the validation of the questionnaire (iv) and the correlation method between objective and subjective data (v); optimization-based calibration, using a multi-level multi-step approach. As highlighted in Chapter 1, students use to stay more than 30% of their daytime in classrooms, thus the importance of assessing and enhancing the indoor conditions of school buildings. The indoor conditions can be evaluated either through measurements of physical quantities related to the main IEQ domains or by means of questionnaires’ administration. Chapter 2 presents an overview of the state of the art of the assessment of the IEQ by means of questionnaires and measurements. Chapter 3 reports the innovative methodology developed during my doctoral program. In the first part, the method for evaluating the indoor conditions of school buildings through objective and subjective evaluation, namely respectively in-field measurements and questionnaires, is presented. The second part includes the optimization-based procedure to calibrate the energy model of educational buildings, which explores the optimization-based procedure to calibrate the energy model of an educational building from short-term monitoring of a portion of a building in selected periods. Chapter 4 presents the case studies considered for the application of the methodologies. The results reported in Chapter 5 are divided into three sections: the questionnaire validation (i), the correlation between objective and subjective data ´(ii) and the multi-level multi-step optimization-based calibration (iii). The results coming from the questionnaire validation are divided into three subsections according to the three selected KPIs, i.e. effectiveness, efficiency and resolution. The outcomes of the correlation between the subjective survey and the objective data are split based on the different type of analysis, namely the single-domain that consists in analyzing the correlation between measured environmental conditions and the subjective response within the same comfort domain, and the multi-domain that aims to explore the combine effects of different comfort domains. The last paragraph presents the results of the multi-level multi-step optimization-based calibration method applied to two monitoring periods, i.e. unoccupied building with system off and occupied building with system off. The outcomes include the results of the calibration and the validation of the building model in different periods with the same characteristics of the reference periods. The last chapter reports the main conclusions of the work and future developments of the research. The collected dataset and the developed strict methods should be considered as part of one complex and replicable approach which can serve as a basic conceptual framework for future studies focusing on the assessment the IEQ of educational buildings and other complex buildings can be used for further investigation on the assessment of IEQ and comfort in educational buildings.
Diversamente da quanto accade negli studi di laboratorio, negli edifici scolastici gli occupanti sono esposti contemporaneamente a stimoli acustici, termici, visivi e di qualità dell'aria e l'effetto dell'ambiente interno sulla percezione e sulle prestazioni degli studenti dipende dai loro effetti combinati. La presente ricerca si occupa della valutazione della qualità ambientale interna (IEQ) negli edifici scolastici mediante misurazioni fisiche (valutazione oggettiva), somministrazione di questionari (valutazione soggettiva) e simulazione e calibrazione di modelli energetici. Il lavoro propone diversi metodi originali per: la progettazione di un questionario soggettivo standard coerente per i quattro domini di comfort, ovvero IAQ, ambiente termico, acustico e visivo (i); raccolta dati (ii) e la somministrazione del questionario (iii); validazione e analisi dei dati, ovvero la validazione del questionario (iv) e il metodo di correlazione tra dati oggettivi e soggettivi (v); calibrazione basata sull'ottimizzazione, utilizzando un approccio multi-level multi-step. Come evidenziato nel Capitolo 1, gli studenti trascorrono più del 30% della loro giornata in classe, da qui l'importanza di valutare e migliorare le condizioni interne degli edifici scolastici. Le condizioni indoor possono essere valutate sia attraverso misure di grandezze fisiche relative ai principali domini sia tramite la somministrazione di questionari. Il capitolo 2 presenta una panoramica dello stato dell'arte della valutazione dell'IEQ mediante questionari e misurazioni. Il capitolo 3 riporta la metodologia innovativa sviluppata durante il mio programma di dottorato. Nella prima parte viene presentato il metodo per valutare le condizioni interne degli edifici scolastici attraverso valutazioni oggettive e soggettive, ovvero rispettivamente misurazioni in campo e questionari. La seconda parte include la procedura basata sull'ottimizzazione per calibrare il modello energetico degli edifici didattici, che esplora la procedura basata sull'ottimizzazione per calibrare il modello energetico di un edificio scolastico dal monitoraggio a breve termine di una porzione di un edificio in periodi selezionati. Il capitolo 4 presenta i casi di studio considerati per l'applicazione delle metodologie. I risultati riportati nel Capitolo 5 sono divisi in tre sezioni: la validazione del questionario (i), la correlazione tra dati oggettivi e soggettivi ´ (ii) e la calibrazione basata sull'ottimizzazione multi-level multi-step (iii). I risultati provenienti dalla validazione del questionario sono suddivisi in tre sottosezioni in base ai tre KPI selezionati, ovvero efficacia, efficienza e risoluzione. Gli esiti della correlazione tra l'indagine soggettiva e i dati oggettivi sono suddivisi in base al diverso tipo di analisi, ovvero single-domain che consiste nell'analizzare la correlazione tra le condizioni ambientali misurate e la risposta soggettiva all'interno dello stesso dominio di comfort, e multi-domain che mira a esplorare gli effetti combinati di diversi domini di comfort. L'ultimo paragrafo presenta i risultati del metodo di calibrazione basato sull'ottimizzazione multilivello multifase applicato a due periodi di monitoraggio, ovvero edificio non occupato con sistema spento e edificio occupato con sistema spento. L'ultimo capitolo riporta le principali conclusioni del lavoro e gli sviluppi futuri della ricerca. Il set di dati raccolto e i metodi rigorosi sviluppati dovrebbero essere considerati come parte di un approccio complesso e replicabile che può fungere da quadro concettuale di base per studi futuri incentrati sulla valutazione dell'IEQ degli edifici scolastici e di altri edifici complessi può essere utilizzato per ulteriori indagini su la valutazione dell'IEQ e del comfort negli edifici scolastici.

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Ma, Nuo. "Indoor Human Sensing for Human Building Interaction." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/98916.

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We inhabit space. This means our deepest mental and emotional understanding of the world is tied intimately to our experiences as we perceive them in a physical context. Just like a book or film may induce a sense of presence, so too may our modern sensor drenched infrastructures and mobile information spaces. With the recent development of personal and ubiquitous computing devices that we always carry with us, and increased connectivity and robustness of wireless connections, there is an increasing tie between people and things around them. This also includes the space people inhabit. However, such enhanced experiences are usually limited to a personal environment with a personal smartphone being the central device. We would like to bring such technology enhanced experiences to large public spaces with many occupants where their movement patterns, and interactions can be shared, recorded, and studied in order to improve the occupants' efficiency and satisfaction. Specifically, we use sensor networks and ubiquitous computing to create smart built environments that are seamlessly aware of and responsive to the occupants. Human sensing system is one of the key enabling technologies for smart built environments. We present our research findings related to the design and deployment of an indoor human sensing system in large public built spaces. We use a case study to illustrate the challenges, opportunities, and lessons for the emerging field of human building interaction. We present several fundamental design trade-offs, applications, and performance measures for the case study.
Master of Science
The recent advances in mobile technologies, like smart phones and enhanced wireless communication, allow people to experience added comfort and convenience brought by these devices. For example, smart lighting and air conditioning control can be set remotely, before people arrive at their homes. However, these personal experiences are usually limited to personal spaces and tied to a specific personal smart phone. When it comes to public spaces, we seldom see such technological advancement being utilized. In reality, the concept of smart public spaces is still limited to technologies like opening / closing a door automatically. We discuss the reasons that cause such difference between personal and public spaces. We argue that Human Building Interactions should be shaped around non-intrusive indoor human sensing technologies. We present discussions, considerations and implementation of a system that uses a low cost camera network for indoor human sensing. We also describe several applications based on the developed system. We demonstrate how to bring technology enhanced experiences to public built spaces and provide smart built environments.

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Tran, Ngoc Quang. "Optimisation of indoor environmental quality and energy consumption within office buildings." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2013. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/64114/1/Ngoc%20Quang_Tran_Thesis.pdf.

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This research investigated airborne particle characteristics and their dynamics inside and around the envelope of mechanically ventilated office buildings, together with building thermal conditions and energy consumption. Based on these, a comprehensive model was developed to facilitate the optimisation of building heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, in order to protect the health of their occupants and minimise the energy requirements of these buildings.

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Peng, Chiung-Yu. "Identification and quantification of volatile organic compound emissions from buildings and heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems." Ann Arbor, Mich. : University of Michigan, 1998. http://books.google.com/books?id=yxIvAAAAMAAJ.

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RAIMONDO, DANIELA. "Indoor and Energy quality assessment in buildings." Doctoral thesis, Politecnico di Torino, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/11583/2501601.

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Interest on Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) increased more and more in the last years. This attention is evidenced by the fact that nowadays maintaining a certain level of comfort in the building, as it is prescribed by the standards, means to deal with a rising energy demand. For this reason increasing attention needs to be spent in the envelope and systems building design, as well in the building robustness at the occupants actions. Further than the design phase it becomes necessary to shift the focus on to the building management and maintenance too. To this aim energy and environmental long term monitoring are introduced in the building life cycle, with the objective to optimize the building-plant system and to look for a good balance between different levels of comfort and energy consumption. Main objective of the research is the critical analysis of the indoor environment quality assessment existing methods, within the evaluation of the energy consumptions required to maintain specific comfort levels, and suggesting new methods of analysis and representation of data from monitorings or simulations. In order to reach high level of IEQ, the study also focuses on the performance evaluation of energy saving by radiant systems, through tests in thermostatic room or in situ. Research is therefore conceived in three deepening phases. The first phase is based on the indoor environment quality assessment through the use of categories. Comfort, and particularly thermal comfort, is regulated by the standards ISO 7730/2005, EN 15251/2007, and ASHRAE 55/2004. Methods for data elaboration and representation suggested by the standards (specifically by EN 15251) are in this work compared and discussed, investigating, also through the use of a case study, the effective utility of these instruments, of their applications and limitations. Maintaining specific comfort categories in a building often comport to spend energy. Energy demand can be varied depending on the envelope characteristics and quality, and from the systems controls and the outdoor climate conditions. With the aim to demonstrate what enounced, the second phase of the study is explained through an office room energy simulation, conducted with the aim to assess the heating and cooling energy demand variation with the thermal and air quality variation, as well as for different climate zones. Buildings energy simulation is however only one of the tools that can be used for this kind of analysis. Direct monitoring of the energy consumptions is in fact another method that is becoming more and more important. Energy monitoring plans, with IEQ monitoring plans, give a detailed overview about levels of comfort and related costs in a building, moreover investigating on the correct or wrong systems operation and controls. The correlation between the two measurements conducted simultaneously allows to give, as output of the analysis, a complete building energy and environment evaluation. In addition to the data processing, the study also addresses the results representation, through the analysis of energy and environmental data from one year of monitoring in an office building. As mentioned above, the connecting element between ICQ in a room and the related energy consumptions, beyond the building thermo physical properties, is the installed plants system. In recent years many studies in literature about comfort in buildings treated the topic of low energy radiant systems to reach the indoor environmental quality objective. Among the many typologies of radiant systems, this work faces with two kinds of them, very different one from each other, and both object of analysis and experimentation: the first is represented by vertical electric radiant plates for heating, and the second is about TABS (Thermal Active Building System) for cooling. In both cases energy and environmental measurements were carried out. In the first case the experiments took place in test rooms, in the second case they were performed in situ (office room). Differences between the two analysis and strategies adopted for the measurements during the operational time of the building using TABS are shown. Results of the work are shown and widely explained in internationals journals and international conference papers.

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Hesaraki, Arefeh. "Energy and Indoor Environment in New Buildings with Low-Temperature Heating System." Licentiate thesis, KTH, Strömnings- och klimatteknik, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-123566.

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The aim of this thesis was to evaluate new buildings with low-temperature heating systems in terms of energy consumption and thermal comfort, and to pay some attention to energy savings and indoor air quality. To reach this aim, on-site measurements as well as building energy simulations using IDA Indoor Climate and Energy (ICE) 4 were performed. Results show that the investigated buildings with low-temperature heating system could meet the energy requirements of Swedish regulations in BBR (Boverkets byggregler), as well as provide a good level of thermal comfort. Implementing variable air volume ventilation instead of constant flow, i.e. decreasing the ventilation air from 0.35 to 0.10 l·s-1·m-2 during the whole unoccupancy (10 hours), gave up to 23 % energy savings for heating the ventilation air. However, the indoor air quality was not acceptable because VOC (volatile organic compound) concentration was slightly above the acceptable range for one hour after occupants arrive home. So, in order to create acceptable indoor air quality a return back to the normal ventilation requirements was suggested to take place two hours before the home was occupied. This gave 20 % savings for ventilation heating. The results of this study are in line with the European Union 20-20-20 goal to increase the efficiency of buildings by 20 % to the year 2020.

QC 20130612

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Bignert, Vidar. "Possible factors influencing perceived symptoms in the indoor environment of office buildings." Thesis, Örebro universitet, Institutionen för läkarutbildning, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-42937.

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Abbass, Omed Akber. "Ozone Interaction with Indoor Building Materials and HVAC Filters." PDXScholar, 2017. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3771.

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As modern life develops, humans spend most of their time inside buildings. Understanding the effects of different building materials that exist indoors on indoor air quality is crucial to ensure comfort, health, and productivity of building occupants. Indoor air quality (IAQ) is an important field of building science that focuses on studying the existence of different compounds indoors. These compounds include: airborne particles such as dust, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as carbonyls, reactive gases such as radon, ozone and others. Ozone is a strong oxidant gas that has adverse effects on human health, and is highly reactive with building materials that exist indoors. This reaction may reduce its concentration indoors, but may produce other by-products that could be more harmful for human health than ozone itself. In this dissertation, ozone reaction with different building materials is investigated in four studies. The first includes studying the effect of indoor carpet fiber type on ozone removal and carbonyl emissions. This study provides valuable data and knowledge about the importance of selecting carpet type and its effect on indoor environment. In the second study, different indoor plants were tested to evaluate their ability to remove ozone. The results from this study show wide variation between plants tested on ozone removal. Also, the ability of plants as ozone removal agent changes as light levels change. The third part studies ozone removal efficiency of HVAC filters previously installed in air handling units located on green and white membrane roofs of a commercial building. Detailed filter surface analysis using scanning electron microscope (SEM) was performed to understand the nature of deposits on these filters. The reason for differences in ozone removal efficiency of two filters in comparison with new filter is also discussed. The fourth study investigated ozone removal and carbonyl emissions from three different VOC content indoor latex paints. The outcomes from this research show that zero VOC latex paint has the most ozone effective removal capacity and this paint is the least carbonyl emitter. The research presented in this dissertation adds new data, valuable knowledge, and expands the understanding of the importance of selecting indoor materials to raise indoor air quality and make the buildings' indoor environment healthier and safer.

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Sahlberg, Bo. "Indoor Environment in Dwellings and Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) : Longitudinal Studies." Doctoral thesis, Uppsala universitet, Arbets- och miljömedicin, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-172769.

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People spend most of their time indoors and mostly in the dwelling. It is therefore important to investigate associations between indoor exposure in dwellings and health. Symptoms that may be related to the indoor environment are sometimes referred to as the "sick building syndrome" (SBS). SBS involves symptoms such as eye, skin and upper airway irritation, headache and fatigue. Three longitudinal studies and one prevalence study on personal and environmental risk factors for SBS in adults were performed. The prevalence study included measurements of indoor exposures in the dwellings. The longitudinal studies, with 8-10 years follow-up time, showed that smoking and indoor paint emissions were risk factors for SBS. Moreover, building dampness and moulds in dwellings were risk factors for onset (incidence) of general symptoms, skin symptoms and mucosal symptoms. In addition subjects living in damp dwellings have a lower remission of general symptoms and skin symptoms. Hay fever was a risk factor for onset of skin symptoms and mucosal symptoms, and asthma was a risk factor for onset of general and mucosal symptoms. Biomarkers of allergy and inflammation (bronchial reactivity, total IgE, ECP and eosinophil count) were predictors of onset of SBS symptoms, in particular mucosal symptoms. In the prevalence study, any SBS-symptom was associated with some individual volatile organic compounds of possible microbial origin (MVOC) e.g. 2-pentanol, 2-hexanon, 2-pentylfuran and 1-octen-3ol. Moreover, there were associations between indoor levels of formaldehyde and the plasticizer Texanol and any SBS. The result from the study indicates that individual MVOC are better indicators of SBS than the total value of MVOC. A final conclusion is that smoking, dampness and moulds and emissions from indoor painting may increase the onset of SBS. The indoor environment in dwellings over time has improved, but there is still a need for further improvements of the indoor environment in dwellings. More longitudinal SBS studies are needed.

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Bjurnemark, Stark Inger. "Sustainable buildings with a health perspective - a qualitative interview study." Thesis, Malmö högskola, Fakulteten för hälsa och samhälle (HS), 2009. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-26518.

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When buildings are constructed and renovated today, environmental aspects aremost often taken into consideration. There might, however, not always be aclearly expressed health perspective. This study explores the obstacles andopportunities to initiating a clearer health perspective in the construction and realestate branches. A qualitative method was used, consisting of semi-structuredinterviews with ten agents from the construction and real estate branches in theprivate and municipal sectors. The analysis was performed by the use oforganisational theory. The results show that different financial incentives such as“ROT-deductions” are the ones most discussed when it comes to attaining aclearer health perspective into the sustainability work of the branches.Suggestions for improvement in the legislative area were for example aboutspecifying threshold values for certain substances in the indoor environment, andabout improving policy for how chemical products are to be declared. Differentclassification systems for healthy buildings could also be of use, if coordinated tobe better understood. Also the need to discuss ethics, morality and “attitude” inthe branches was brought up. The need to use health economic measures to beable to make comparisons to other societal costs was also emphasized.

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Guan, Li-Shan. "The implication of global warming on the energy performance and indoor thermal environment of air-conditioned office buildings in Australia." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2006. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/16329/1/Li-Shan_Guan_Thesis.pdf.

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Global warming induced by the emissions of greenhouse gases is one of the most important global environmental issues facing the world today. Using the building simulation techniques, this research investigates the interaction and relationship between global warming and built environment, particularly for the air-conditioned office buildings. The adaptation potential of various building designs is also evaluated. Based on the descriptive statistics method, the Pearson Product Moment Correlation and the regression analysis method, ten years of historical hourly climatic data for Australia are first analyzed. The distribution patterns of key weather parameters between a Test Reference Year (TRY) and multiple years (MYs), and between relatively cold and hot years are also compared. The possible cross-correlation between several different weather variables are then assessed and established. These findings form a useful basis and provide insights for the development of future weather models under "hot" global warming conditions and the explanation of building performance at different locations. Based on a review of the existing weather data generation models and findings from historic climatic data analysis, an effective method to generate approximate future hourly weather data suitable for the study of the impact of global warming is presented. This is achieved by imposing the future temperature projection from the global climate model on top of the historically observed weather data. Depending on the level of information available for the prediction of future weather conditions, this method allows either the method of retaining to current level, constant offset method or diurnal modelling method to be used. Therefore it represents a more comprehensive and holistic approach than previous one that have been used to convert the available weather data and climatic information to a format suitable for building simulation study. An example of the application of this method to the different global warming scenarios in Australia is also presented. The performance of a representative office building is then examined in details under the five weather scenarios (present, 2030 Low, 2030 High, 2070 Low and 2070 High) and over all eight capital cities in Australia. The sample building used for this study is an air conditioned, square shape, ten storey office tower with a basement carpark, which is recommended by the Australian Building Codes Board to represent the typical office building found in the central business district (CBD) of the capital cities or major regional centres in Australia. Through building computer simulations, the increased cooling loads imposed by potential global warming is quantified. The probable indoor temperature increases and overheating problems due to heat load exceeding the capacity of installed air-conditioning systems are also presented. It is shown that in terms of the whole building indoor thermal environment, existing buildings would generally be able to adapt to the increasing warming of the 2030 year Low and High scenarios projections and the 2070 year Low scenario projection. For the 2070 year High scenario, the study indicates that the existing office buildings in all capital cities will suffer from the overheating problem. To improve the building thermal comfort to an acceptable standard (ie, less than 5% of occupied hours having indoor temperature over 25°), a further increase of 4-10% of building cooling load is required. The sensitivity of different office building zoning (i.e. zone at different floors and/or with different window orientation) to the potential global warming is also investigated. It is shown that for most cities, the ground floor, and the South or Core zone would be most sensitive to the external temperature change and has the highest tendency to having the overheating problem. By linking building energy use to CO2 emissions, the possible increase of CO2 emissions due to increased building energy use is also estimated. The adaptation potential of different designs of building physical properties to global warming is then examined and compared. The parametric factors studied include the building insulation levels, window to wall ratio, window glass types, and internal load density. It is found that overall, an office building with a lower insulation level, smaller window to wall ratio and/or a glass type with lower shading coefficient, and lower internal load density will have the effect of lowering building cooling load and total energy use, and therefore have a better potential to adapt to the warming external climate. This phenomenon can be linked to the nature of internal-load dominated office-building characteristics. Based on these findings, a series of design and adaptation strategies have been proposed and evaluated.

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Guan, Li-Shan. "The implication of global warming on the energy performance and indoor thermal environment of air-conditioned office buildings in Australia." Queensland University of Technology, 2006. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/16329/.

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Global warming induced by the emissions of greenhouse gases is one of the most important global environmental issues facing the world today. Using the building simulation techniques, this research investigates the interaction and relationship between global warming and built environment, particularly for the air-conditioned office buildings. The adaptation potential of various building designs is also evaluated. Based on the descriptive statistics method, the Pearson Product Moment Correlation and the regression analysis method, ten years of historical hourly climatic data for Australia are first analyzed. The distribution patterns of key weather parameters between a Test Reference Year (TRY) and multiple years (MYs), and between relatively cold and hot years are also compared. The possible cross-correlation between several different weather variables are then assessed and established. These findings form a useful basis and provide insights for the development of future weather models under "hot" global warming conditions and the explanation of building performance at different locations. Based on a review of the existing weather data generation models and findings from historic climatic data analysis, an effective method to generate approximate future hourly weather data suitable for the study of the impact of global warming is presented. This is achieved by imposing the future temperature projection from the global climate model on top of the historically observed weather data. Depending on the level of information available for the prediction of future weather conditions, this method allows either the method of retaining to current level, constant offset method or diurnal modelling method to be used. Therefore it represents a more comprehensive and holistic approach than previous one that have been used to convert the available weather data and climatic information to a format suitable for building simulation study. An example of the application of this method to the different global warming scenarios in Australia is also presented. The performance of a representative office building is then examined in details under the five weather scenarios (present, 2030 Low, 2030 High, 2070 Low and 2070 High) and over all eight capital cities in Australia. The sample building used for this study is an air conditioned, square shape, ten storey office tower with a basement carpark, which is recommended by the Australian Building Codes Board to represent the typical office building found in the central business district (CBD) of the capital cities or major regional centres in Australia. Through building computer simulations, the increased cooling loads imposed by potential global warming is quantified. The probable indoor temperature increases and overheating problems due to heat load exceeding the capacity of installed air-conditioning systems are also presented. It is shown that in terms of the whole building indoor thermal environment, existing buildings would generally be able to adapt to the increasing warming of the 2030 year Low and High scenarios projections and the 2070 year Low scenario projection. For the 2070 year High scenario, the study indicates that the existing office buildings in all capital cities will suffer from the overheating problem. To improve the building thermal comfort to an acceptable standard (ie, less than 5% of occupied hours having indoor temperature over 25°), a further increase of 4-10% of building cooling load is required. The sensitivity of different office building zoning (i.e. zone at different floors and/or with different window orientation) to the potential global warming is also investigated. It is shown that for most cities, the ground floor, and the South or Core zone would be most sensitive to the external temperature change and has the highest tendency to having the overheating problem. By linking building energy use to CO2 emissions, the possible increase of CO2 emissions due to increased building energy use is also estimated. The adaptation potential of different designs of building physical properties to global warming is then examined and compared. The parametric factors studied include the building insulation levels, window to wall ratio, window glass types, and internal load density. It is found that overall, an office building with a lower insulation level, smaller window to wall ratio and/or a glass type with lower shading coefficient, and lower internal load density will have the effect of lowering building cooling load and total energy use, and therefore have a better potential to adapt to the warming external climate. This phenomenon can be linked to the nature of internal-load dominated office-building characteristics. Based on these findings, a series of design and adaptation strategies have been proposed and evaluated.

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Metzger, A. Susanne. "Assurance of Indoor Environmental Quality through Building Diagnostics at Schematic Design." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/31057.

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With increasing knowledge about the indoor climate in recent years, preventive methods to avoid health problems caused by deficient building performance may become preferable to reactive methods. Benefits from preventive actions have been suggested for late building design phases, construction, and building operations, however, few data are available that demonstrate the benefits of preventive actions in early planning phases.

In a case study, expected building performance in respect to indoor air quality and thermal conditions in a large judicial facility in North America was evaluated retrospectively at the end of the schematic design and substantial completion phases. A process for evaluation of building performance at schematic design is developed from existing procedures for building diagnostics in operating buildings. Criteria for evaluation of expected building environmental quality at schematic design as available from standards and guidelines are presented.

The results of the study show that building diagnostics at schematic design can be an effective mean of prevention of occupant health problems. Further findings indicate that the assurance of indoor environmental quality can be improved, if the criteria for expected building performance are defined and complied with from early on. It is concluded that implementation of building diagnostics in early project phases can reduce the likelihood of adverse health effects in operating buildings.
Master of Science

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Torresin, Simone. "Indoor soundscape modelling: Rethinking acoustic comfort in naturally ventilated residential buildings." Doctoral thesis, Università degli studi di Trento, 2022. http://hdl.handle.net/11572/327411.

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The connection with the outdoor acoustic environment created by open windows has so far been one of the main impediments to the adoption of natural ventilation (NV), due to indoor noise levels easily exceeding design requirements. Starting from the apparent conflict between ventilation and acoustic comfort needs, and the potential offered by NV for low-energy cooling and ventilation, the study explores the opportunities for shaping healthy and supportive acoustic environments through sound transmitted via ventilation openings. The research question challenges the traditional approach to acoustic design, which assumes noise annoyance reduction by merely reducing decibel noise levels, drawing inspiration from the soundscape concept. Soundscape science characterises the human response to the acoustic environment in context and can help understand if and how NV may contribute to defining spaces that sound good to their occupants. The aim is to go beyond an exclusive focus on the ‘noise’ – ‘noise annoyance’ binomial, and to employ ‘wanted’ sounds as a design resource for creating acoustically pleasant environments. However, the soundscape framework, as described by ISO 12913 standard series, has been primarily developed for use in the context of urban planning. This has led to question (i) how the soundscape approach can be applied to the indoor built environment, (ii) what factors positively influence it and (iii) how it can be measured in residential buildings. A systematic literature review categorized the factors that positively influence acoustic perception in domestic environments, highlighting its strongly multi-factorial nature. Beyond noise level, a combination of acoustic and non-acoustic factors was found to affect acoustic perception, such as the urban context, house and person-related factors, socio-economic, situational, and environmental factors. The study benefited from a round of interview with experts in the field of urban soundscape, indoor soundscape, acoustic design, and public health and well-being. The collective discussion encompassed the characterization, management, and design of indoor (and indoor versus outdoor) soundscapes to identify current research gaps in the objective and subjective evaluation of the indoor acoustic environments. In response, based on a laboratory listening test, a model of perceived affective quality of indoor acoustic environments has been derived to guide the measurement and improvement of indoor residential soundscapes. During the test, 35 participants were asked to rate 20 different sound scenarios each. Scenarios were defined by combining four indoor sound sources and five urban environments, filtered through a window ajar, on 97 attribute scales. Comfort, content, and familiarity were extracted as the main perceptual dimensions explaining respectively 58%, 25% and 7% of the total variance in subjective ratings. A measurement system was proposed, based on a 2-D space defined by two orthogonal axes, comfort, and content, and two derivative axes, engagement and privacy – control, rotated 45° on the same plane. The model was tested in a large-scale online survey to assess the influences of different acoustic and non-acoustic factors on indoor soundscape dimensions, window-opening behavior, and occupant well-being. Evaluating the affective response to the indoor acoustic environment through the comfort – content model helped identifying the impacts that acoustical factors (e.g., sound typology), building (e.g., house size), urban (e.g., availability of a quiet side), situational (e.g., number of people at home), and person-related factors (e.g., noise sensitivity) determine on building occupants depending on the specific activity people are engaged with at home, reaching a more in-depth knowledge compared to appraisals based on annoyance evaluation alone. By disentangling the positive and negative contributions of sound stimuli according to people’s perception, it was possible to highlight the opportunity provided by NV to create a sense of place and enhance indoor soundscapes, providing useful masking opportunities in the presence of disturbing indoor noise sources. Results pointed to the existence of benefits from NV able to compensate for a reduced acoustic comfort in case of outdoor acoustic pollution. However, the availability of ‘positive’ urban soundscapes is essential for occupants’ well-being, and is linked primarily to access to natural sounds, but also to other commonly available urban sounds. The ‘quieter’ is therefore not always the better, but it really depends on the composition of indoor and outdoor sound types according to people’s preference and on the interaction with different domains (e.g., visual). Such evidence reinforces the role of acoustics in building and urban design, integrated with the other disciplines involved and based on multi-domain research. Overall, the doctoral study contributes to framing the ‘indoor soundscape’ concept, addressing scientific, industrial, social, and environmental implications, and suggesting future lines of research.

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Li, Baizhan. "Assessing the influence of indoor environment of self-reported productivity in offices." Thesis, University of Reading, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.267893.

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Liu, Xiaojing, and Taoju Zhang. "An Energy Audit of Kindergarten Building in Vallbacksgården." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för bygg- energi- och miljöteknik, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-20609.

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Energy consumption rises continuously every year. Globally, buildings count for half of electricity consumption and 20%-40% of total energy consumption. Building energy sector consumed 40% of total energy use in Sweden. The vital of reduce energy consumption is to enhance building efficiency. This energy audit work investigates how energy consumes of kindergarten building in Vallbacksgården. Then give out cost effective suggestions to improve energy efficiency for object building. The result shows total amount of energy input of the building is equal to 241.9 MWh. While district heating takes the largest part of energy input that correspond to 188.9 MWh (78%), and cost around 123500 Kr annually. Furthermore, energy 38.0 MWh (16%) is contributed by solar radiation, which becomes second largest source of energy input. Finally, internal heat generation is the smallest contributor of energy input which counts 15.0 MWh (6%). For energy output, majority of heat loss is leaded by transmission losses. It cost 190.4 MWh per year that shares 79% of total energy output. Nature ventilation losses of object building shares 17% of total heat output which is 41.7 MWh. Mechanical ventilation and hot tap water have energy consumption with 7.8 MWh and 2.0 MWh respectively. They take rest 4% of total energy output. According to the finding, several reasonable suggestions will be given. Firstly, for the costless solution, decreasing indoor temperature 1℃ or 2 ℃ is able to reduce heating demand 9.0 MWh or 18.1 MWh annually. It will reduce CO2 emission 131859g- 266070 g, and save 5274 – 10642 SEK per year. Secondly, substitute district heating systems by ground source heat pump is an environmental solution. Using ground source heat pump has priority of environment, which lower CO2 emission 1909200 g/year and save 68262 SEK/year by analyze. Investment for this solution is 979000 SEK and the payback time takes 14.3 year. Replace old windows is a moderate solution of cost. Substitution by using energy glass can reduce 20.9 MWh heating demand and 307377 g CO2 every year. New energy glass windows can cut 13591 SEK for district heating every year. The renovate investment and payback time are more than 159732 SEK and 11.8 year respectively.

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Runeson, Roma. "Personality, Stress, and Indoor Environmental Symptomatology." Doctoral thesis, Uppsala : Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis : Univ.-bibl. [distributör], 2005. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-5899.

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23

SHTYLLA, SAIMIR. "Towards (nearly Zero Energy Buildings) nZEB educational buildings. Two scenarios to solve the energy performance, indoor environmental quality and capacity of the existing school buildings." Doctoral thesis, Università degli studi di Ferrara, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/11392/2488165.

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School buildings are fundamental to transmit civic values and importance of a better environment to future generations. Besides the low consume of energy and exploit of renewable resources, an energy-efficient school also provides a good Indoor Environmental quality (IEQ), very important for the students and teachers. Quite often, the refurbishment of the existing school buildings is approached exclusively in an energy-efficiency perspective. Unlike new buildings, where energy-efficiency goals are much easier to meet through a wider range of solutions leading toward low consumes of energy (sometimes near to zero), in the case of existing ones the morphology and technology of the building represent important obstacles. Since 2010, in the European Union EU (regardless their destination), the refurbished buildings were required to produce their own energy demand from renewable sources. Defined as “nearly Zero Energy Buildings” (nZEB) and introduced for the first time in the EPBD 2010 recast, by producing their own energy demand without generating harmful emissions it was possible to reduce the dependence from the grid, known for transmitting power generated from non-renewable sources such as fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Albania, a potential candidate to become a member of the EU, has transposed two important directives the EPBD 2010 recast and EED 2012 in its legislation but still not operative. Because of the missing acts regulating the technical aspects of building envelope elements, heating/cooling plants, exploit of renewable resources and in particular the certification of the energetic consume achieved through various labels, that (new or refurbished) buildings obtain. Refurbishment interventions on existing school buildings, performed by public administrations to reduce energy consumption and improve the indoor comfort are the clear example of this unclear energy efficiency framework. Most of the public school buildings of the nine-year cycle were built during the socialist system (known as Shkolla Tip ). Usually, they have been subject to refurbishment interventions without a clear goal, even though their building technology does not allow a wide range of interventions. Poor energetic-performance apart, capacity is also a serious problem. The low number of classrooms constrain the split of the didactic activity in two rounds (morning and afternoon), posing an important dilemma between the necessity to refurbish versus the possibility to demolish and build new ones. The nine-year cycle “Hillary Clinton” school, in the Kamza municipality, has been chosen as case because of the necessity to refurbish and increase the capacity. By proposing a set of technological solutions, there will be proved the convenience deriving from the refurbishment and the increase of capacity of the existing school buildings against their demolition and building of a new energy-efficient school with the desired capacity. Furthermore, considering our climatic context and the “sustainability” of our national grid system, the decarbonization of the school building stock in the country may occur sooner than the expected EU goal for 2050. For this reason, the refurbishment proposals will consider two possible scenarios: (i) the refurbishment by preserving the capacity; and (ii) the refurbishment with increase of capacity.

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Collinge, William O. "A dynamic life cycle assessment framework for whole buildings including indoor environmental quality impacts." Thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 2013. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3573266.

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Life cycle assessment (LCA) can aid in quantifying the environmental impacts of whole buildings by evaluating materials, construction, operation and end of life phases with the goal of identifying areas of potential improvement. Since buildings have long useful lifetimes, and the use phase can have large environmental impacts, variations within the use phase can sometimes be greater than the total impacts of other phases. Additionally, buildings are operated within changing industrial and environmental systems; the simultaneous evaluation of these dynamic systems is recognized as a need in LCA. At the whole building level, LCA of buildings has also failed to account for internal impacts due to indoor environmental quality (IEQ). The two key contributions of this work are 1) the development of an explicit framework for DLCA and 2) the inclusion of IEQ impacts related to both occupant health and productivity. DLCA was defined as “an approach to LCA which explicitly incorporates dynamic process modeling in the context of temporal and spatial variations in the surrounding industrial and environmental systems.” IEQ impacts were separated into three types: 1) chemical impacts, 2) nonchemical health impacts, and 3) productivity impacts. Dynamic feedback loops were incorporated in a combined energy/IEQ model, which was applied to an illustrative case study of the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation (MCSI) building at the University of Pittsburgh. Data were collected by a system of energy, temperature, airflow and air quality sensors, and supplemented with a postoccupancy building survey to elicit occupants’ qualitative evaluation of IEQ and its impact on productivity. The IEQ+DLCA model was used to evaluate the tradeoffs or co-benefits of energy-savings scenarios. Accounting for dynamic variation changed the overall results in several LCIA categories—increasing nonrenewable energy use by 15% but reducing impacts due to criteria air pollutants by over 50%. Internal respiratory effects due to particulate matter were up to 10% of external impacts, and internal cancer impacts from VOC inhalation were several times to almost an order of magnitude greater than external cancer impacts. An analysis of potential energy saving scenarios highlighted tradeoffs between internal and external impacts, with some energy savings coming at a cost of negative impacts on either internal health, productivity or both. Findings support including both internal and external impacts in green building standards, and demonstrate an improved quantitative LCA method for the comparative evaluation of building designs.

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Sorret, Juliette. "Sustainability in the Built Environment : The Case of Building Certification." Thesis, KTH, Byggvetenskap, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-234923.

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The building industry is one of the most polluting industry in the world as buildings are responsible for 30% of greenhouse gas emission in the world (IAE, 2010) and have very low replacement rates. Measuring the environmental impacts of construction is now a major concern.The main objective of this thesis was to give an overview of the current status of building certifications, discuss the expected roles and limitations of building certifications, and analyze the impact of building certification tools during the conception of a building or an urban project.For the following thesis, qualitative research was used the most since the purpose is to have a better understanding of the role of building certifications among building and real estate professionals. An empirical study was made consisting of 9 semi-structured interviews and a survey designed for building professionals such as architects, constructors, environmental building consultants, and property developers.This paper shows that certification tools are becoming very common among building professionals especially in metropolitan areas such as Paris. The main drivers for developing certified buildings are client demand, marketing advantage and an overall high quality building. The main obstacle remains the initial cost. Building professionals from the interview and the survey almost all agree that certifications are a good guide and assessment tool to build high quality buildings. However, building professionals are quite insure on the impact of certification tools on sustainability on the conception of a building or urban project as many factors are to take into account.

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Riffelli, Stefano. "Sustainable comfort in indoor environments: global comfort indices and virtual sensors." Doctoral thesis, Urbino, 2022. http://hdl.handle.net/11576/2700929.

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Ekasiwi, Sri Nastiti Nugrahani. "Passive method for improving indoor thermal environment for residential buildings in hot-humid region (Indonesia)." 京都大学 (Kyoto University), 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2433/136354.

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Lei, Yizhong. "An investigation of the indoor environmental quality of a sustainable building at UBC." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/46511.

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Aspects of the indoor environment that directly influence the occupants are ventilation, indoor-air quality (IAQ), acoustic and thermal condi¬tions, as well as lighting. All five aspects were studied to investigate the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in a sustainable building (CIRS) at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver campus. Physical measurements were made in several selected spaces (mainly offices and meeting rooms) to monitor indoor parameters such as background noise level, reverberation time, VOC and CO₂ concentrations, ambient temperature, relative humidity, indoor illuminance level, etc. Building performance was analyzed by comparing the measurement results to standard criteria, and to the design goals of CIRS. Several selected spaces in CIRS were found unsatisfactory in some aspects of IEQ – e.g. the mechanical ventilation system was unable to remove 80% of outdoor ultrafine particles; more than 20% of the measured spaces exceeded the maximum recommended background noise level; 100% of the noise isolations between offices and their surroundings were inadequate; speech privacy between adjacent private offices was poor; rooms in the South wing suffered from very high illuminance levels, etc. Building features and management details that influenced IEQ were discussed to analyze the relationships between building design/operation and performance. Several room features were discussed, such as air change rate, furnishing material, ventilation types, acoustical characteristics, etc. Several conclusions were drawn – e.g. ventilation conditions of rooms were highly affected by the door/windows statuses; rooms with the lowest air change rates had the highest UFP concentrations; crowd noises in the atrium caused high background noise levels; inadequate noise isolations were caused by indoor light-weight partitions, etc.

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Lugg, Andrew. "Energy and cost efficient fuzzy environmental services control strategies for achieving high standards of indoor environmental quality and human comfort." Thesis, Cranfield University, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/1826/4198.

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Building designers aim to create buildings with high quality internal environments which are energy and cost efficient in their use. Failure to attain these objectives simultaneously can lead to reduced building occupant productivities. An important aspect of the building services system which can have a major effect on the provision of occupant comfort within a building is the adopted control strategy. The research project investigated the use of fuzzy control strategies as a means of achieving good standards of comfort provision for occupants while maintaining or improving energy and cost efficiencies for the operation of the building HVAC services. This represented a multi-variant controls objective which was capable of being fulfilled by a fuzzy controller. A one zone building computer model was developed using Matlab and Simulink software as a platform for the development of fuzzy control strategies. The model incorporated building services Heating Ventilating and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) system models. A Proportional + Integral + Derivative (PID) control strategy was used as a benchmark control methodology against which to compare the developed fuzzy control strategies. Three types of fuzzy controller were developed during the course of the research project. These were a Proportional Derivative Fuzzy Controller (PDFC), a Fuzzy Ventilation Controller, and the Fuzzy High Level Controller. The PDFC used the inputs of error and rate of change of error from a specified zone environmental condition set point in much the same way as a PID controller would to control the HVAC plant. Simulation results indicated that the PDFC control strategy was capable of achieving performance levels equal to the conventional PID control strategy. The Fuzzy Ventilation Controller was used to control the rate of fresh outside air entering the building zone through the mechanical ventilation system in order to make use of the "free" cooling and dehumidification available by purging the indoor air when possible. Simulation results showed improvements in the indoor environmental quality provided, and the energy efficiency and cost efficiency of running the HVAC plant. Finally, the Fuzzy High Level Controller used a fuzzy supervisor to control the actions of the fuzzy ventilation controllers. Simulation results showed that the fuzzy supervisor was able to improve the comfort conditions provided and the energy and cost efficiencies of the operation of the HVAC plant when compared to the use of the fuzzy ventilation control strategies alone.

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Ng, Wun-yin. "Impacts of the indoor environment on the health of occupants in open-plan offices in Hong Kong." Click to view the E-thesis via HKU Scholars Hub, 2004. http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B37931039.

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Kashanifar, Mehrad. "Sustainable Development of Buildings (Green Buildings )." Master's thesis, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, 2020.

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Hart-Schubert, Patrice. "An evaluation of sensory comfort components of survey questionnaires used for indoor environment problems in buildings." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/45051.

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The efficacy of indoor environment evaluation is, in part, a function of the reliability and validity of the different measures used. This thesis presents results of a study, conducted in a building without known problems, which compares the reliability and validity of sensory comfort components from three well-known survey questionnaires. A review of literature reveals that sensory comfort theory draws upon many disciplines including, hedonics, psychometrics, and olfaction theory. The fundamental domains thermal, air quality, lighting, and acoustics and their dimensions are identified. The conceptual model integrates these theories underlying human response to sensory comfort.

The research questions involved in the selection of survey questionnaires are explored by examining sixteen indoor environment survey questionnaires. A meta-evaluation reveals that these questionnaires have three major functions, proactive, reactive, and re-evaluative studies.

Finally, the methods used to analyze survey questionnaires for reliability and validity are examined. An analysis of variance shows that the order in which questions were presented did not affect responses. The reliability of the measures tested ranged from poor to good. Examination of content and face validity by expert and untrained judges demonstrates inconsistencies in common or accepted meanings of the measures considered in evaluating the indoor environment. Analysis of construct validity indicates that not all survey questionnaire variables were categorized under their expected dimensions.

Contrary to advice found in the literature, this thesis suggests that the practice of combining items from different questionnaires is problematic. Finally, in buildings with known problems we can expect a relatively high degree of reliability and validity. However, the utility of such questionnaires in inventorying and assessing buildings without known problems will prove to be questionable.
Master of Urban and Regional Planning

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Rydberg, Henrik. "Hållbara projekteringsverktyg : Från byggnadsinformationsmodell till simulering – en utvärdering av Revit och Virtual Environment." Thesis, Mälardalens högskola, Akademin för hållbar samhälls- och teknikutveckling, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-15408.

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This study examines the use of building modeling and energy simulations in the design process of a building. The take-off point is the notion of energy simulations being needed early and throughout the building design process, and that the lack of energy simulations may be explained by the fact that they are time consuming and therefore often too expensive. A greater interoperability between software tools used by relevant disciplines, such as the architect and the energy specialist, would create smoother workflows, which would reduce this cost and open up for more frequent and iterative energy simulation processes. The study is an assessment of the modeling tool Revit and the simulation tool Virtual Environment and whether they can create smoother workflows, and make leeway for a more frequent use of energy simulations throughout the design process. It also investigates the limitations of what can be examined by simulations in Virtual Environment. This will hopefully help clarify the future role of energy simulations in design processes. The method is a trial by error approach of testing the two software tools by building and simulating a model. The results of these tests show that the workflow is not optimal (and therefore time consuming) for frequent and iterative simulations throughout the design process, but it also reveals some great possibilities of what can be performed with these two powerful tools at hand. Further development with regards on platform independency of the building information model, including seamless exporting and importing, seems necessary to strengthen the future role of energy simulations.

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Gou, Zhonghua, and 苟中华. "Addressing human factors in green office building design : occupant indoor environment quality survey in China." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10722/194619.

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Although requirements in relation to indoor environment quality (IEQ) have been made in green building rating systems such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and China GBL (Green Building Label) to promote occupant comfort, health and productivity, in practice, very little is known about user perception and satisfaction with IEQ in green buildings. Recruitment and post-occupancy evaluation of 10 office buildings (8 green buildings and 2 non-green buildings) and their 696 occupants for this study generated a dataset representing many potential avenues of inquiry. From the occupant’s point of view, the green offices in buildings with whole-building certification were significantly more satisfactory than the non-green offices, whereas the green offices certified only on the basis of their interiors were comparable to the non-green offices. Mixed-mode ventilation performed much better than other ventilation types (central air-conditioning and split air-conditioning). However, the mixed-mode green buildings were invariably perceived to be too cold in winter. A correlation model showed that green building users tended to appreciate a well ventilated, daylit, and quiet indoor environment for their health and productivity. The findings in the study made critical suggestions with regard to pursuing green building certification and addressing human factors in sustainable building design and research. The strengths and weaknesses of this study were discussed to inform future studies.
published_or_final_version
Architecture
Doctoral
Doctor of Philosophy

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Fung, Kar-lai Carrie, and 馮嘉麗. "The concept of healthy buildings." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2000. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31254548.

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Kim, Jungsoo. "Impact of indoor environmental quality (IEQ) factors on occupant evaluation of workspaces." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/13341.

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This study aims to better understand the relationship between perceived building performance on specific Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) factors and occupants’ overall evaluation of their workspace environment. A three-factor satisfaction model, developed originally in the context of marketing, has been adapted to and found suitable for the IEQ domain. Analyses were conducted on the Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) database from Center for Built Environment (CBE) at the University of California, Berkeley to estimate the relative significance of individual IEQ factors on occupants’ overall workspace evaluation, depending on whether or not the occupants were satisfied with the IEQ factor in question. The empirical analysis suggested that a certain amount of input (i.e. increments or decrements of occupant satisfaction with individual IEQ factor) doesn’t necessarily lead to a commensurate desirable output (i.e. overall workspace satisfaction). According to each IEQ factor’s functional relationship with overall satisfaction, fifteen IEQ factors addressed in the CBE questionnaire were classified into three groups: (1) Basic Factors – having predominantly negative effects, (2) Bonus Factors – having predominantly positive effects, and (3) Proportional Factors – having both positive and negative effects with similar magnitudes. In general the IEQ factors tended to show negative asymmetry, becoming more critical when the building was deemed to be underperforming on them. This study also explored the influence of gender, building ventilation system type, and office layout configuration, on occupant IEQ satisfaction. (1) Female gender was significantly associated with increased dissatisfaction with all of the IEQ factors analysed in this thesis, but particularly with temperature, indoor air quality and workspace cleanliness. (2) Occupants of buildings with different ventilation systems responded in different ways to various IEQ dimensions. In naturally-ventilated buildings, good thermal conditions were associated with significantly enhanced workspace satisfaction and barely discernible adverse impacts. In air-conditioned buildings, on the other hand, thermal conditions were more directly associated with overall dissatisfaction with workspace environment. Occupants provided with higher degrees of adaptive opportunities were more satisfied with the IEQ of their workplaces. (3) Enclosed private offices clearly outperformed open-plan layouts iii in most aspects of IEQ, but particularly in acoustics, privacy and proxemics issues. Noise distraction and lack of privacy were identified as the major sources of workplace dissatisfaction in open-plan offices. The predicted decrements in overall workspace satisfaction due to privacy and acoustic issues in open-plan layouts were bigger than the predicted increment due to ease of communication between colleagues. Further analyses performed on an Australian POE database collected through Building Occupant Survey System Australia (BOSSA) project highlighted the benefits of external view through a window, positively affecting occupant satisfaction with workplace IEQ.

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Engvall, Karin. "A Sociological Approach to Indoor Environment in Dwellings : Risk factors for Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) and Discomfort." Doctoral thesis, Uppsala : Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis : Univ.-bibl. [distributör], 2003. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-3506.

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Mambo, Abdulhameed D. "Occupancy driven supervisory control of indoor environment systems to minimise energy consumption of airport terminal building." Thesis, Loughborough University, 2013. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/12778.

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A very economical way of reducing the operational energy consumed by large commercial buildings such as an airport terminal is the automatic control of its active energy systems. Such control can adjust the indoor environment systems setpoints to satisfy comfort during occupancy or when unoccupied, initiate energy conservation setpoints and if necessary, shut down part of the building systems. Adjusting energy control setpoints manually in large commercial buildings can be a nightmare for facility managers. Incidentally for such buildings, occupancy based control strategies are not achieved through the use of conventional controllers alone. This research, therefore, investigated the potential of using a high-level control system in airport terminal building. The study presents the evolution of a novel fuzzy rule-based supervisory controller, which intelligently establishes comfort setpoints based on flow of passenger through the airport as well as variable external environmental conditions. The inputs to the supervisory controller include: the time schedule of the arriving and departing passenger planes; the expected number of passengers; zone daylight illuminance levels; and external temperature. The outputs from the supervisory controller are the low-level controllers internal setpoint profile for thermal comfort, visual comfort and indoor air quality. Specifically, this thesis makes contribution to knowledge in the following ways: It utilised artificial intelligence to develop a novel fuzzy rule-based, energy-saving supervisory controller that is able to establish acceptable indoor environmental quality for airport terminals based on occupancy schedules and ambient conditions. It presents a unique methodology of designing a supervisory controller using expert knowledge of an airport s indoor environment systems through MATLAB/Simulink platform with the controller s performance evaluated in both MATLAB and EnergyPlus simulation engine. Using energy conservation strategies (setbacks and switch-offs), the pro-posed supervisory control system was shown to be capable of reducing the energy consumed in the Manchester Airport terminal building by up to 40-50% in winter and by 21-27% in summer. It demonstrates that if a 45 minutes passenger processing time is aimed for instead of the 60 minutes standard time suggested by ICAO, energy consumption is significantly reduced (with less carbon emission) in winter particularly. The potential of the fuzzy rule-based supervisory controller to optimise comfort with minimal energy based on variation in occupancy and external conditions was demonstrated through this research. The systematic approach adopted, including the use of artificial intelligence to design supervisory controllers, can be extended to other large buildings which have variable but predictable occupancy patterns.

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Bonde, Magnus. "Green Buildings : Exploring performance and thresholds." Doctoral thesis, KTH, Bygg- och fastighetsekonomi, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-184874.

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The overall aim of this research project is to study green/energy-efficient real estate from an economic perspective. The thesis summarizes the results from five different studies with a connection to green/energy-efficient real estate.The aim of the first paper (paper A) is to study how tenants perceive the indoor environment in green-rated premises, and to compare these results with tenants’ perception of a conventional building’s indoor environment. The main result is that the tenants in the green-rated building are more satisfied with the indoor environment than the tenants in the conventional building.Papers B and C assess whether energy efficiency has an impact on buildings’ income and market values using Swedish real-estate data. The key result is that although there is a small impact on building-related income, this does not seem to translate into a higher market value.The last two papers included in this thesis study hindrances to a more energy-efficient building sector. In paper D, two office buildings are used as baseline cases to provide insights into the difficulties that can arise when trying to upgrade a building to make it more energy efficient. The results indicate that changing existing leases is a prohibitive process and that it is often difficult to evaluate the final impact of an energy upgrade. The last paper focuses on why it may be rational to postpone green refurbishments even if they are profitable. The main result is that it may be rational to postpone such refurbishments. However, by introducing different financial penalties and/or subsidies, these investments could be triggered today.To sum up, the results indicate that green buildings are preferred by tenants, but that there still appear to be economic barriers to a greener building sector.
Det övergripande syftet med denna avhandling är att studera grön/energieffektiva byggnader ur ett ekonomiskt perspektiv. Avhandlingen består av en kappa och fem separata studier, vilka belyser tre olika forskningsfrågor. Syftet med den första studien är att studera hur hyresgäster upplever inomhusmiljön i gröna byggnader. I studien jämförs inomhusmiljön i en grön byggnad med inomhusmiljön i en likvärdig konventionell byggnad. Resultatet visar, på det stora hela, att hyresgästerna är mer nöjda med inomhusmiljön i den gröna byggnaden. De nästföljande studierna, B respektive C, undersöker om byggnadens energiprestanda har någon inverkan på dess hyra respektive marknadsvärde. Resultaten visar på en liten signifikant hyrespåverkan, dock verkar denna inte ha någon effekt på byggnadernas marknadsvärdebedömningar. Skälet till detta kan vara att hyrespremien anses för liten för att ha någon signifikant inverkan på byggnadens marknadsvärde, alternativt att fastighetsvärderare inte beaktar energiprestanda när en fastighet värderas. De två sista studierna studerar varför vissa, tillsynes lönsamma, energiinvesteringar inte genomförs. Resultaten från studie D visar på svårigheterna med att ingå ett samarbetsavtal (för att eliminera felaktiga incitament) mellan hyresgäst och hyresvärd. Sådana avtal tar lång tid att förhandla fram och det uppkommer ofta svårigheter med att utvärdera de tänkta energiinvesteringarnas ekonomiska utfall. Studie E utgår ifrån en realoptionsmodell, vilken används för att utvärdera när ”gröna” renoveringar bör genomföras i en befintlig byggnad. Studien visar att det kan vara rationellt att vänta trots att investeringen idag är lönsam. Vidare visar resultaten att det är möjligt att via byggsubventioner/finansiella ”straff” påverka aktörer att tidigarelägga energieffektiviseringsåtgärder. Dock är det viktigt att dessa utformas korrekt så att det inte skapar några snedvridna incitament. Övergripande visar resultaten att gröna byggnader är att föredra ur ett brukarperspektiv men att det fortfarande finns ekonomiska hinder för en mer hållbar byggsektor. Nyckelord: gröna byggnader, energieffektiva byggnader, EPC, inomhusmiljö, Realoptioner, fastighetsekonomi.

QC 20160407

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Norris, Mary Jo. "A Study of Radon in Air and Water in Maine Schools." Fogler Library, University of Maine, 2002. http://www.library.umaine.edu/theses/pdf/NorrisMJ2002.pdf.

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Pitt, Luke. "Monitoring thermal comfort in the built environment using a wired sensor network." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2016. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/monitoring-thermal-comfort-in-the-built-environment-using-a-wired-sensor-network(88b0f2e2-e1a4-4d59-ba32-43995a5ed13a).html.

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This thesis documents a sensor networking project with an interest in internal environment monitoring in relation to thermal comfort. As part of this project sensor nodes were designed, built and deployed. Data was collected from the nodes via a wired Ethernet network and was stored in a database. The network remains operational several years after its initial deployment. The collected data was analyzed in conjunction with data from a local meteorological station and the building's smart fiscal energy meters. The analysis suggests the possibility of automated thermal comfort classification using data from a sensor network.

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Hellström, Petter. "Assessing the impact of the indoor environment on productivity : A case study in a university building in Stockholm." Thesis, KTH, Installations- och energisystem, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-229864.

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The impact that the indoor environment has on productivity is a topic that has been investigated in numerous studies. There are a variety of different methods that have been used to evaluate productivity with. There are quantitative methods and there are qualitative ones, and both have been used in the literature as indicators or real productivity. The quantitative ones are for instance short arithmetical or linguistic performance tests or measurements of the actual quantitative output of a job. Qualitative assessments of productivity consist of different ways of allowing the subjects to rate their own productivity. Both these two approaches of evaluating productivity are claimed to be subject to different issues, and the question of which way is preferable is a matter of contention among the researchers. The quantitative approach is claimed to be unable to reflect the complex and qualitative output of many modern jobs, while the qualitative one is believed to be highly influenced by bias. This master’s degree project has investigated the associations between the two approaches and conducted a qualitative assessment of the impact of the indoor environment on the productivity in a university building in Stockholm. Numerous studies have been reviewed that include both quantitative evaluations of productivity and qualitative evaluations of the indoor environment. Qualitative evaluations are for instance evaluations of environmental satisfaction, as well as evaluations of healthiness and productivity. The relationship between the quantitative measurements and the subjective evaluation is indeed complex. However, there appears to be a consistency to some extent between the two, and the trend seems to indicate that occupants who are more productive are also more satisfied with the indoor environment or perceive themselves to be healthier or more productive. A working hypothesis has been formulated; that subjective evaluations of the indoor environment may act as indicators of productivity. This approach has been used in a university building in Stockholm, where the productivity of the students has been evaluated through a survey, together with physical measurements of the indoor environment. The survey is designed based on the current literature within the field. It has a large emphasis on productivity, with several questions concerning it directly and indirectly. The physical parameters that were measured were radiant temperature, air velocity, relative humidity, CO2- concentration and sound pressure level. Considerable correlations were observed between perceived productivity and environmental satisfaction, perceived environmental control and between different ways of evaluating productivity subjectively. The correlations between the physical measurements and the subjective evaluations were in general considerably weaker than the ones between the different subjective parameters. The correlations between the mean CO2-concentration and productivity was weak, and similar findings were obtained concerning sound pressure level. This emphasise the importance of heeding the opinions of the occupants while evaluating the performance of a building, as physical measurements alone appear to be unable to reflect the users’ perspective reliably. The correlation between the thermal parameters (evaluated by the PMV- value) and the subjective evaluations were, on the other hand, considerably stronger. This may indicate that the thermal parameters are among the most influential ones in creating a productive workplace. Furthermore, the study discusses different methods that have been used to evaluate productivity with. It discusses their weaknesses and strengths and what elements they contain that may be used for future studies of productivity.

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Sundström, Viktoria. "Inomhusmiljö i miljöcertifierade skolbyggnader : En jämförande studie av upplevd inomhusmiljö i två miljöcertifierade och två konventionella skolbyggnader." Thesis, Umeå universitet, Institutionen för ekologi, miljö och geovetenskap, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-119450.

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The purpose of this report was to find out if there were any differences in how the indoor environment was experienced in environmentally certified school buildings compared with similar conventional buildings. For that two certified school buildings, Vegaskolan in Vännäs and Hedlunda preschool in Umeå was compared with two conventional preschools in Umeå, Solbacken and Skattelden, in terms of how the indoor environment was experienced. This was done using a questionnaire and interviews. The results of the survey showed that Vegaskolan had the lowest percentage among the staff that was bothered by various environmental factors, while Hedlunda preschool had the largest share. Hedlunda also had the highest percentage amongst the staff with health problems. All four buildings surveyed, however, had smaller percentages who were disturbed by noise than preschools in general, and the environmentally certified buildings had an even lower percentage. If this is due to the certification is however difficult to say. Since there were more differences between the two certified buildings, it is difficult to draw general conclusions depending on the building type. Most of the differences showed in this study do not depend on the certification of the buildings, but of other causes. However the environmentally certified buildings are more complex than the conventional buildings, with more things that can go wrong. Therefore it requires more monitoring of the indoor environment after the building is put into use, as well as more information to operators and users in order to prevent adverse health effects, which seems to be the case at Hedlunda.

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Zalejska-Jonsson, Agnieszka. "In the Business of Building Green : The value of low-energy residential buildings from customer and developer perspectives." Doctoral thesis, KTH, Bygg- och fastighetsekonomi, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-131375.

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An overarching aim of this research was to investigate the comprehensive value of green residential buildings as seen from two perspectives: that of the developer and that of the occupant (the customer). The dissertation consists of studies presented in seven papers. The studies conducted to investigate the developer’s perspective focused on construction cost and potential profit (papers I and VII). The customer’s perspective was examined with three approaches: the impact that energy and environment have on the decision to purchase (or rent) an apartment (paper V), willingness to pay for a green apartment (paper VI) and finally, the occupants’ satisfaction with the dwelling and indoor environment (papers II, III and IV). The first paper examines whether increased investment costs are profitable, taking into account the reduction in operating costs. The investment viability is approached by comparing investment in conventional and green residential building, particularly passive houses, using real construction and post-occupancy conditions. The increased investment costs in energy-efficient building were also the focus of paper VII. In this paper, the aim was to study how technologies used in energy-efficient residential building construction affect the available saleable floor area and how this impacts on the profitability of the investment. Potential losses and gains of saleable floor area in energy-efficient buildings were assessed using a modelled building and analysed with the help of the average construction cost. Papers II and IV present results from a study of occupants’ satisfaction and indoor environmental qualities. Both papers aim at comparing and analysing responses from occupants living in green and conventional buildings. Paper III focuses on a similar subject, but investigates occupants’ satisfaction among all adults living in multi-family buildings in Sweden, providing a national context for the results presented in papers II and IV. The results indicate that occupants are generally satisfied with their dwellings, but indoor environment proved to have a statistically significant effect on overall satisfaction. The results in paper V indicate that energy and environmental factors have a minor impact on customers’ decision to purchase or rent an apartment. However, availability of information on building energy and environmental performance may have an effect on the likelihood of the buyers’ being interested in environmental qualities and consequently an impact on their decision. The study presented in paper VI shows that customer interest in energy and environmental factors has a significant impact on stated willingness to pay for green dwellings. The paper discusses the stated willingness to pay for low-energy buildings and buildings with an environmental certificate and attempts to assess the rationale of the stated willingness to pay for low-energy dwellings given potential energy savings.
Fokus i detta forskningsprojekt har legat på att undersöka värdet av gröna bostäder ur ett brett perspektiv, dvs både genom att studera byggherrens och de boendes (kundens) synpunkter. I avhandlingen ingår sju uppsatser. Undersökningen av byggherrens synpunkter fokuserades på kostnader och potentiella inkomster (uppsats I och VII). Kundernas åsikter undersöktes på tre olika sätt: vilken effekt energi och miljö faktorer hade på beslut att köpa eller hyra en lägenhet (uppsats V), betalningsvilja för gröna bostäder (uppsats VI) och slutligen de boendes trivsel samt nöjdhet med inomhusmiljön (uppsats II,III och IV). Den första uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka om ökningen av investeringskostnader vid byggande av gröna byggnader kan täckas av framtida energibesparingar och minskning av driftkostnad. Investeringens lönsamhet undersöktes genom att jämföra skillnader i byggkostnader mellan konventionella och gröna bostäder med skillnader i driftskostnader givet olika antaganden om energipriser och räntekrav. Huvudfokus i uppsats VII var också byggkostnader, men denna gång undersöktes hur nya tekniska lösningar påverkar boarea och lönsamhet av energieffektiva bostäder. Genom att konstruera en modell av ett typhus analyserades potentiella ökningar i boarea med nya lösningar och hur detta påverkade lönsamheten i olika geografiska lägen (prisnivåer). Uppsatserna II och IV presenterar resultat från boendeundersökningar. Båda uppsatserna syftar till att undersöka boendes trivsel och nöjdhet med inomhusmiljö samt att testa skillnaden i svar från boende i gröna och konventionella bostäder. Uppsats III fokuserar också på inomhusmiljön, men analysen gjordes på svaren som samlades in under Boverkets projekt BETSI och resultaten är därmed representativa för alla vuxna som bor i flerfamiljshus i Sverige. Uppsats III ger därmed en national kontext för uppsatserna II och IV. Resultaten visar att boende trivs i sina bostäder, men inomhusmiljön har en statistiks signifikanta effekt på allmän nöjdhet faktor.. Resultaten i uppsats V tyder på att energi- och miljöaspekter spelar mindre roll i beslutet att köpa eller hyra en lägenhet. Den synliga informationens tillgänglighet angående byggnadens energi- och miljöprestanda, påverkar kundens intresse för dessa faktorer och därmed indirekt hushållets beslut. Resultaten i uppsats VI pekar på att kunderna, som är intresserade av byggnaders energi och miljö prestanda, är villiga att betala mer för gröna bostäder. I uppsats 6 diskuteras betalningsvilja för låg-energi byggnader och för byggnader med miljöcertifikat samt utvärderas om den angivna betalningsviljan är rationell beslut när man tar hänsyn till nuvärdet av framtida energibesparingar.

QC 20131014

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Elbagir, Sohair G. "Characterisation and source identification of selected pollutants in house dust." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2011. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/49842/1/Sohair_Elbagir_Thesis.pdf.

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House dust is a heterogeneous matrix, which contains a number of biological materials and particulate matter gathered from several sources. It is the accumulation of a number of semi-volatile and non-volatile contaminants. The contaminants are trapped and preserved. Therefore, house dust can be viewed as an archive of both the indoor and outdoor air pollution. There is evidence to show that on average, people tend to stay indoors most of the time and this increases exposure to house dust. The aims of this investigation were to: " assess the levels of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs), elements and pesticides in the indoor environment of the Brisbane area; " identify and characterise the possible sources of elemental constituents (inorganic elements), PAHs and pesticides by means of Positive Matrix Factorisation (PMF); and " establish the correlations between the levels of indoor air pollutants (PAHs, elements and pesticides) with the external and internal characteristics or attributes of the buildings and indoor activities by means of multivariate data analysis techniques. The dust samples were collected during the period of 2005-2007 from homes located in different suburbs of Brisbane, Ipswich and Toowoomba, in South East Queensland, Australia. A vacuum cleaner fitted with a paper bag was used as a sampler for collecting the house dust. A survey questionnaire was filled by the house residents which contained information about the indoor and outdoor characteristics of their residences. House dust samples were analysed for three different pollutants: Pesticides, Elements and PAHs. The analyses were carried-out for samples of particle size less than 250 µm. The chemical analyses for both pesticides and PAHs were performed using a Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS), while elemental analysis was carried-out by using Inductively-Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectroscopy (ICP-MS). The data was subjected to multivariate data analysis techniques such as multi-criteria decision-making procedures, Preference Ranking Organisation Method for Enrichment Evaluations (PROMETHEE), coupled with Geometrical Analysis for Interactive Aid (GAIA) in order to rank the samples and to examine data display. This study showed that compared to the results from previous works, which were carried-out in Australia and overseas, the concentrations of pollutants in house dusts in Brisbane and the surrounding areas were relatively very high. The results of this work also showed significant correlations between some of the physical parameters (types of building material, floor level, distance from industrial areas and major road, and smoking) and the concentrations of pollutants. Types of building materials and the age of houses were found to be two of the primary factors that affect the concentrations of pesticides and elements in house dust. The concentrations of these two types of pollutant appear to be higher in old houses (timber houses) than in the brick ones. In contrast, the concentrations of PAHs were noticed to be higher in brick houses than in the timber ones. Other factors such as floor level, and distance from the main street and industrial area, also affected the concentrations of pollutants in the house dust samples. To apportion the sources and to understand mechanisms of pollutants, Positive Matrix Factorisation (PMF) receptor model was applied. The results showed that there were significant correlations between the degree of concentration of contaminants in house dust and the physical characteristics of houses, such as the age and the type of the house, the distance from the main road and industrial areas, and smoking. Sources of pollutants were identified. For PAHs, the sources were cooking activities, vehicle emissions, smoking, oil fumes, natural gas combustion and traces of diesel exhaust emissions; for pesticides the sources were application of pesticides for controlling termites in buildings and fences, treating indoor furniture and in gardens for controlling pests attacking horticultural and ornamental plants; for elements the sources were soil, cooking, smoking, paints, pesticides, combustion of motor fuels, residual fuel oil, motor vehicle emissions, wearing down of brake linings and industrial activities.

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Ncube, Matiwaza. "The development of a methodology for a tool for rapid assessment of indoor environment quality in office buildings in the UK." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2012. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/12492/.

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This thesis describes a methodology for the development of a novel tool for rapid assessment of Indoor Environment Quality (IEQ) in office buildings in the UK. The tool uses design, measured, calculated and surveyed data as input for IEQ calculations. The development of such a tool has become a necessity especially in the developed world where legally binding targets for Green House Gas (GHG) emissions have been agreed and where buildings are required by law to display energy performance certification. The novelty of this tool is that it addresses the need to present an indoor environment performance rating that can be presented alongside energy performance certification since the energy performance of office buildings depends significantly on the criteria used for the indoor environment. The tool, called the IEQAT (Indoor Environment Quality Assessment Tool), is based on the IEQ model which was developed from literature review. The IEQ model is based on the IEQ index which was derived from contributing factors or sub indices that include Thermal Comfort, Indoor Air quality (IAQ), Acoustic Comfort and Lighting. The model was tested by studying the responses of occupants of three office buildings in the UK. Their subjective responses which were collected via a questionnaire were compared against model simulation results which were calculated using physical measurements of IEQ variables such as air temperature, illuminance (lux), background noise levels (dBA), relative humidity, carbon dioxide concentration (ppm), and air velocity. By fitting a multivariate regression model to questionnaire data, a weighted ranking of parameters affecting IEQ was produced and new provisional weightings for the IEQ model, which is more relevant to the UK situation, were derived.

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Alzahrani, Hamdan M. "Developing a model for assessing the effect of physical indoor environment quality on teachers' performance in Saudi education buildings." Thesis, University of Wolverhampton, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/2436/621725.

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The nature and quality of the built learning environment affect occupants' comfort, wellbeing and performance. Within the broad range of studies of the physical indoor environment reported in the literature, there are several which have focused on the effects of these environmental conditions on the comfort and physical health of students and teachers, while the main consideration in others is the organizational health of the school. The parameters, which are measured often concern the state and condition of the physical environment. Categories of building features, which appear to influence comfort, health and wellbeing, include thermal sensation, acoustics, lighting, air quality, classroom equipment, learning resources and other aspects of the teachers' workspace. Those components of the physical of indoor environment, which are considered to most strongly affect occupants' comfort, wellbeing and performance, are subject to sets of standards. The aim of this study is to elucidate the association between the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) of educational buildings and teachers' performance. Following a comprehensive review of the literature on the effects of IEQ on teachers' comfort, wellbeing and performance, a case study was conducted in which physical measurements were made of a range of indoor environmental variables in the classrooms of a technical college in Saudi Arabia, during lessons. At the same time, the teachers of those classes were asked to complete a questionnaire designed to investigate the quality of the indoor environment and explore teacher performance. An artificial neural network was then used to create an assessment model in order to test the hypothesis that the quality of the indoor physical environment in educational buildings is related to teacher performance and to predict future data. This research makes both academic and practical contributions to the study of the relationship between IEQ and teachers' performance. The findings of this research will be used as a primary knowledge resource for future researches and to identify initial IEQ parameters and tools for further in-depth studies. In practical terms, it offers standards to help designers to consider the importance of IEQ and its impact on building users.

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DEL, BOLGIA MONICA. "Indoor environmental quality and occupants' comfort:a comprehensive understanding of humans' perception and adaptiveness." Doctoral thesis, Università degli Studi di Roma "Tor Vergata", 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/2108/202241.

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Abstract In recent years, a number of studies in the realm of Indoor Environmental Quality have been set to better understand occupants’ perception and behaviour phaenomena. Differences in people’s perception of the indoor environment, personal preferences with regard to the air quality, thermal and visual comfort, as well as physiological, psychological, cultural, economic and sociological aspects could have a relevant impact on the building energy performance. At the same time, indoor environmental conditions could considerably affect health, productivity and comfort of people. Due to the dual nature of this problem, on one hand a recent increase in efforts toward developing dependable models of occupants’ presence and interactions with building control systems has been observed; on the other hand, more strictly regulations have been introduced and new standards have been developed in order to ensure an even higher quality of indoor environmental conditions. However, due to the complexity of multiple interacting factors, there is a lack of knowledge focusing on a holistic comprehension of users’ sensation and behaviour. The present contribution undertakes an empirically-based study in the area of Indoor Environmental Quality and represents an attempt to provide an additional contribution in the fields of humans’ perception and adaptiveness. For this purpose, two significantly different building typologies were investigated: the first one is a mechanically cooled and heated classroom at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, with “passive” occupants and a short-term monitoring and surveys; the second one is a naturally ventilated office area at the Vienna University of Technology, with “active” occupants and a long-term high-resolution monitoring. Starting from raw data, comparisons and structured analysis were carried out. This allowed for objective and subjective assessments of the indoor environmental conditions across different seasons (summer and winter periods), occupants’ conditions (steady state or transient) and system operations (ventilation system on/off). The results generally shed light on the complexity in the evaluation of the indoor environmental conditions related to inhabitants’ comfort perception in buildings. The main critical issue lies in the “noise” generated by the simultaneous presence of a large set of possible factors influencing users’ perception and behaviour. As a consequence of the subjective nature of human perception, the generated occupants’ behaviours are not easy to predict. Despite it is anything but trivial to identify unambiguous and clear “signals” of individual causal factors, it is hard to quantify their “weight” and relative importance. Even under deeply different boundary conditions (conditioned building versus naturally ventilated building, mediterranean versus continental climate, pronounced differences in the cultural, social and economic backgrounds of occupants), the obtained results mainly reveal consistent common outcomes and allowed for some general considerations: the higher the hygro-thermal comfort satisfaction, the higher the Indoor Air Quality perceived. As a Abstract iv consequence, a limited awareness in the perception of the real Indoor Air Quality, expressed in terms of air exchange rate and conventionally represented by the carbon dioxide concentration, has been observed, especially when the overall indoor environmental conditions were perceived as comfortable. This bias related to the human subjective perception represents a significant matter, not only in terms of comfort evaluation and control-action behaviours, but also in terms of effects on occupants’ health and well-being and the risks connected to the long-exposure to indoor air pollution. Future research in this scientific area are mainly related to the development of more reliable occupancy-related models for building applications and simulations, based on the improvement of a more comprehensive understanding of humans’ perception and behaviour phaenomena. The further broadening of knowledge in this field, coupled with the development of more accurate regulations and standards focused on the rational use of energy, represents an important challenge in the context of the future sustainable development.

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Jiang, Zhuoying. "Smart Photocatalytic Building Materials for Autogenous Improvement of Indoor Environment: Experimental, Physics-Based, and Data-Driven Modeling Approaches." Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies / OhioLINK, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1626277456472492.

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Betuz, Naima Ebru. "Assessment Of Indoor Air Quality In Crowded Educational Spaces." Master's thesis, METU, 2013. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12615317/index.pdf.

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Indoor air quality has become a challenge together with the global aim &lsquo
decreasing energy consumption&rsquo
. Increasing insulation levels of building envelopes but implementing inaccurate building system details has caused excessive heat, accumulation of pollutants, etc. in spaces. In terms of educational spaces, the increase in complaints and illnesses due to unfavorable indoor air conditions leads to a decrease in concentration and so academic performance of students and staff. In the context, the aim of the study was indicating the poor indoor air quality conditions caused by inadequate fresh air supply in crowded educational spaces and making recommendations for the improvement. In the study, a classroom and a design studio in the METU Faculty of Architecture building were investigated. In order to examine the existing situation, at two locations of each room the temperature, relative humidity and CO2 were continuously recorded between 13 September 2011 and 24 February 2012 and air speed for ten-day periods between 26 November 2011 and 5 January 2012. The evaluation of the collected data indicated that both of the rooms had temperature, so relative humidity and CO2 accumulation problems mainly due to insufficient fresh air supply in the winter period. In order to eliminate the poor conditions in the rooms, the needed outdoor air can be provided through the inlet openings coupled with fan coils, which are in existence but not in use.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Buildings indoor environments'

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