An Integrated Framework for Users’ Well-Being

International Journal of Biometeorology, 2001

Current thermal comfort standards and the models underpinning them purport to be equally applicable across all types of building, ventilation, occupancy pattern and climate zone. A recent research project sponsored by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE, RP-884) critically evaluated these assumptions by statistically analysing a large database of research results in building comfort studies from all over the world (n=22,346). The results reported in this paper indicated a clear dependence of indoor comfort temperatures on outdoor air temperatures (instead of outdoor effective temperature ET* used in RP-884), especially in buildings that were free-running or naturally ventilated. These findings encourage significant revisions of ASHRAE’s comfort standard in terms of climatically relevant prescriptions. The paper highlights the potential for reduced cooling energy requirements by designing for natural or hybrid ventilation in many moderate climate zones of the world.

This Article focuses on general issues on these two notions, highlighting how they dictate the performances of a building and the performance of air conditioning equipment, creating a harmony between the mood of those who live in buildings and energy demand arising in the context of creating thermal comfort. In the past 25 years the thermal comfort and air quality have become standards important in choosing construction materials and air conditioning equipment, mode of operation of the buildings, the area where it located, and especially efficient human resource where they work, aimed at increasing productivity in the workplace. In the context of research, this subject does nothing but highlight some solutions to the problems that can occur during operation of the living space can have the direct effect the health of residents implications, the functioning of air conditioning equipment and ventilation later focusing on important technological contributions of equipment and use restr...

2008

In most European regulations the thermal performance of the buildings is expressed mainly in terms of energy needs or energy consumption. This is the case of the Portuguese regulation. However, in the Mediterranean area and in temperate climates as in Portugal, given the mild climate and the tradition, it is not usual to control in a permanent way the indoor temperature (by heating or, even less, by cooling) of residential buildings. Even in colder climates the concept of passive house keeps gaining momentum and is often seen as the future standard. It is therefore necessary to develop alternative or complementary indicators to provide the end-user with an evaluation of the performance of the building in a more 'passive tonality', directly related to thermal comfort rather than to energy. This study tries to correlate the results of the energy needs assessed by the calculation method used by the Portuguese regulation RCCTE with the indoor temperatures in free-float mode as...

Mathematical Modelling in Civil Engineering, 2014

Global current requirement is to increase thermal comfort in residential and non residential buildings. A field survey was accomplished in a naturally ventilated university classroom in Bucharest, Romania, in winter and spring. Comfort parameters were measured and comfort questionnaires were distributed to the students. Questions were related to thermal sensation of the occupants. This paper compares the experimental results with the occupant’s response. It analyzes the variation of Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) and Predicted Percent of Dissatisfied (PPD) with temperature. It is made a comparison between PMV and thermal sensation vote. The results show PMV values different from Thermal Sensation Vote (TSV) values which means there is a poor approximation of indoor comfort. In conclusion the comfort parameters should be reviewed and should be proposed other evaluation methods. Possible explanations are discussed in relation with thermal regime of the buildings.

Buildings, 2024

Thermal comfort is a complex issue in the built environment due to the physiological and psychological differences of each individual in a building. There is a growing worry over the environmental implications of energy use as a result of the warming of the global climate and the growth in the number of instances of extreme weather events. Many review articles have been written, but these reviews have focused on a specific aspect of occupant behavior and thermal comfort. To research the trends of thermal comfort and energy, this research adopted mixed reviews, i.e., quantitative and qualitative, to understand the state-of-the-art factors affecting the thermal comfort of occupants concerning energy, different occupant modeling approaches, functions, and limitations. The in-depth qualitative discussion provides deeper insights into the impacts of occupant behaviors, factors affecting thermal comfort, and occupant behavior modeling approaches. This study classified occupant behaviors into five categories: occupant characteristics, perceptions of the occupant, realistic behaviors, heat gain, and occupant interactions with the system. It also went further to classify the factors affecting the thermal comfort of users based on past works of literature. These include structural, environmental, and human factors. It was concluded that factors that have the most significant impact on energy are human, structural, and environmental factors, respectively. In addition, most of the occupant behavior modeling approaches that have been used in past studies have pros and cons and cannot accurately predict human behaviors because they are stochastic. Future research should be conducted on thermal comfort for different building functions by examining the varied activity intensity levels of users, especially in educational or commercial buildings. Additionally, a proper investigation should be carried out on how thermal insulation of structural members influences thermal comfort. These should be compared in two similar buildings to understand occupant behavioral actions and energy consumption.

Applied Sciences

Thermal comfort in indoor environments is perceived as an important factor for the well-being and productivity of the occupants. To practically create a comfortable environment, a combination of models, systems, and procedures must be applied. This systematic review collects recent studies proposing complete thermal-comfort-based control strategies, extracted from a scientific database for the period 2017–2021. The study consists of this paper and of a spreadsheet recording all the 166 reviewed works. After a general introduction, the content of the papers is analyzed in terms of thermal comfort models, indoor environment control strategies, and correlation between these two aspects. Practical considerations on scope, required inputs, level of readiness, and, where available, estimated cost are also given. It was found that the predicted mean vote is the preferred thermal comfort modeling approach, followed by data-driven and adaptive methods. Thermal comfort is controlled mainly th...

Energy and Buildings, 2012

A number of metrics for assessing human thermal response to climatic conditions have been proposed in literature over the last decades. They aim at describing human thermal perception of the thermal environment to which an individual or a group of people is exposed. More recently, a new type of -discomfort index‖ has been proposed in scientific literature, in standards and in guidelines for describing, in a synthetic way, the long-term thermal comfort conditions in buildings and for predicting uncomfortable phenomena. Most of these new indices synthesize the thermal performance of a building in a single value.

The origin and development of the adaptive approach to thermal comfort is explained. A number of recent developments in the application of the theory are considered and the origin of the differences between adaptive thermal comfort and the`rational' indices is explored. The application of the adaptive approach to thermal comfort standards is considered and recommendations made as to the best comfort temperature, the range of comfortable environments and the maximum rate of change of indoor temperature. The application of criteria of sustainability to thermal standards for buildings is also considered. #

The Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) refers to the quality of the environment inrelation to health and well-being of the occupants. The IEQ is a holistic concept, which considers several categories, each related to a specific environmental parameter. This paper describes the low-cost and open-source hardware architecture alternative to traditional software tools. These are relatively bulky, difficult to apply in certain occupied environments and expensive in relation to specific experimental campaign. Specifically, it was made an acquisition system to assess the following environmental parameters: thermal Indoor Comfort Quality (ICQ); Indoor Air Quality (IAQ); Indoor Lighting Quality (ILQ). The document consists of three parts. The first describes the evaluation of thermal comfort and related methods of measurement. The second part introduces evaluations useful to characterize the level of the internal environment comfort. Finally the last one describes the instrument used for mon...

Energies, 2020

The paper analyses the indoor environment in two modern intelligent buildings located in Poland. Measurements of air and globe temperatures, relative humidity and carbon dioxide concentration in 117 rooms carried out in the space of 1.5 years were presented. Thermal comfort of the occupants has been investigated using a questionnaire survey. Based on 1369 questionnaires, thermal sensation, acceptability and preference votes were analysed in view of their interdependency as well as their dependency on operative temperature, which proved to be very strong. It has been found that the respondents did not completely rate thermal comfort and indoor environment quality as very high, although the overwhelming sensations were positive. Apart from the operation of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, this might have also been the cause of individual human factors, such as body mass index, as tested in the study, or the finding that people were generally in favour of a warmer environment. Moreover, thermal environment proved to be the most important element for ensuring the well-being of the occupants.