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Indirect evaporative cooling, by using water evaporation to absorb heat to lower the air temperature without adding moisture, is an extremely low energy and environmentally friendly cooling principle. The properties of the wet channel surface in an indirect evaporating cooler, i.e. its moisture wicking ability, diffusivity and evaporation ability, can greatly affect cooling efficiency and performance. Irregular fibres help to divert moisture and enlarge the wetted area, thus promoting evaporation. A range of fabrics (textiles) weaved from various fibres were experimentally tested and compared to Kraft paper, which has been conventionally used as a wet surface medium in evaporative coolers. It was found that most of the textile fabrics have superior properties in moisture wicking ability, diffusivity and evaporation ability. Compared with Kraft paper, the wicking ability of some fabrics was found to be 171%–182% higher, the diffusion ability 298%–396% higher and evaporation ability 77%–93% higher. A general assessment concerning both the moisture transfer and mechanical properties found that two of the fabrics were most suitable for indirective evaporative cooling applications.

This study explores the potential environmental and energy benefits of using activated carbon fiber (ACF) filters for air cleaning in HVAC systems. The parallel aims for the air cleaning system were to enable reduced indoor exposures to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and to simultaneously allow reduced rates and energy consumption for outdoor air ventilation. We evaluated the use of ACF media to adsorb VOCs from indoor air during repeated simulated 12-h to 24-h periods of occupancy. In a cyclic regeneration process, VOCs were desorbed from the ACF media and vented outdoors to enable the next cycle of air cleaning. The VOC removal efficiency of the ACF media was measured using a 9.5-cm 2 ACF specimen exposed to a mixture of VOCs that included toluene, benzene, o-xylene, 1-butanol, limonene, undecane and formaldehyde at 29 °C and 30% relative humidity. The concentrations of these model pollutants upstream of the ACF media were in the range 20–30 ppb, to simulate realistic conditions. Velocities through the ACF media were typical of those in normal particle filter systems (∼0.5 m s −1 ). Initial tests were conducted to develop a modified multi-component Freundlich isotherm and estimate the maximum adsorption capacity of the media, which was determined to be 90 mg VOC per gram of ACF. Three different ACF regeneration methods were explored using relatively cleaner outdoor air under ambient conditions, with this air humidified, and with the filter heated. It was found that heating the ACF media to ∼150 °C by circulation of a DC current through the fibers for a short period (15 min) yielded the best VOC removal results, allowing for subsequent consistent removal efficiencies of 70–80% for most VOCs. Regeneration with unheated outdoor air was also effective and used less energy (subsequent removal efficiency was 50–60% for most VOCs). ACF did not perform as well in eliminating formaldehyde, for which a maximum removal of 25–30% was achieved with heated regeneration. A mass balance model indicated that the combination of ACF air cleaning and a 50% reduction in ventilation will decrease indoor concentrations of VOCs by 60%–80% and reduce formaldehyde concentrations by 12%–40%. Energy modeling indicated the potential to reduce the energy required for heating and cooling of ventilation air by 35% to almost 50%.

This paper focuses on the circular economy (CE), the building industry, and on the disruptive technological innovations that intersect in these arenas. It outlines how disruptive, often digital, technologies can potentially enable a CE in the building industry, primarily within the two most wasteful phases of the building cycle, the construction and demolition phases. This is achieved through an analysis of the potential of each technology type to enable a CE, using existing literature and desktop research on applied examples of the technological solutions in question. The paper aims to clarify the implementation scenarios of digital technologies for the circular building industry and are organised according to technology type, CE principle, building phase, material family, estimated TRL, and type of application.

Geothermal energy piles are increasingly luring attention in the construction industry as a cost-effective and environmental friendly solution for heating and cooling buildings. Energy piles are used as the primary unit in the ground source heat pump systems, which exchange heat with the ground. Energy piles are generally categorized into driven (displacement) and cast-in-place (non-displacement) piles. The present paper aims to review the available methods of design and construction of driven precast concrete energy pile foundations and provides a clear understanding of its construction challenges. Additionally, precast and cast-in-place energy pile foundations are compared. This paper found that precast concrete-driven energy pile foundations are a competitive alternative to cast-in-place energy piles. Driven concrete energy piles have higher quality control and quality assurance in the construction process; they have an easier, faster, and more reliable installation. Several other advantages and limitations related to the technical, economical, and environmental aspects of such piles are discussed in detail. The driven precast concrete foundations have a large worldwide market; however, there is a lack of guidelines, design standards, and experience for using such foundations as energy piles.

Liquid Crystal Elastomers (LCEs) are an exciting category of material that has tremendous application potential across a variety of fields, owing to their unique properties that enable both sensing and actuation. To some, LCEs are simply another type of Shape Memory Polymer, while to others they are an interesting on-going scientific experiment. In this visionary article, we bring an interdisciplinary discussion around creative and impactful ways that LCEs can be applied in the Built Environment to support kinematic and kinetic buildings and situational awareness. We focus particularly on the autonomy made possible by using LCEs, potentially removing needs for motors, wiring and tubing, and even enabling fully independent operation in response to natural environment variations, requiring no power sources. To illustrate the potential, we propose a number of concrete application scenarios where LCEs could offer innovative solutions to problems of great societal importance, such as autonomous active ventilation, heliotropic solar panel systems which can also remove snow or sand autonomously, and invisible coatings with strain mapping functionality, alerting residents in case of dangerous (static or dynamic) loads on roofs or windows, as well as assisting building safety inspection teams after earthquakes., Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures. This is a strongly crossdisciplinary paper, aiming to connect the community working with liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) with designers of the built environment, who can use the unique properties of LCEs in numerous ways, as illustrated in our paper. It is a paper of strongly visionary character, designed to stimulate discussion and motivate new research thrusts

This paper proposes the biophilic design approach as a plausible hypothesis for the challenging conditions related to living and working in extreme cold climates. Biophilic design has recently been developed to overcome the adverse effects of the built environment and to improve human well-being by redefining the human-nature relationship. Yet, biophilic design should be adapted to extreme cold climates in order to meet the biological needs of people in northern territories. This issue becomes more important when considering the availability of natural light due to the strong seasonal photoperiod and its effects on human well-being in such regions. The present paper critically reviews biophilic design patterns and identifies their main shortcomings. These shortcomings include the lack of (1) recommendations applicable to extreme cold climates (2) adaptation to the local photoperiods, and (3) a systemic framework integrated into the design process. The paper draws attention to the image-forming and non-image-forming effects of light as a basis of the human-nature design approach. In this regard, photobiological outcomes have been reviewed. Then, the paper discusses the existing lighting standards and guidelines in North America and how they have mainly been developed to fulfil the image-forming demands for light. Further efforts are needed to revise these standards with respect to the non-image-forming effects of light and the biophilic design requirements. Finally, adaptive building envelopes are presented as a hypothetical solution to optimize the biophilic qualities of buildings and address the biological needs of people living and working in extreme cold climates in northern territories.

The quality of buildings can be assessed in terms of the indoor air quality, thermal comfort, lighting quality, acoustic comfort afforded the occupants, collectively referred to as Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ). A major barrier to a more thoroughly representative audit of actual IEQ performance are the expense and complexity of the measurement instrumentation required. Rapid developments in sensor technology in recent years present the opportunity for continuous and pervasive IEQ monitoring to deliver truly representative characterisations of building performance at a modest cost. The last remaining obstacle to realising these developments seems to be a concern about instrument accuracy. In this paper we test the performance of a low-cost IEQ monitoring system (SAMBA) introduced in an earlier paper. Calibration data from 100 devices was analysed to calculate the standard error of the estimate as a measure of equipment accuracy. Those performance specifications were used in a Monte Carlo simulation based on measurements of thermal comfort parameters from 24 office buildings. Performance measures suggests the low-cost system, whilst not as accurate as laboratory equipment, is more than sufficient for building IEQ diagnostics and compliance assessments. Furthermore, the results of the Monte Carlo simulation show that continuous monitoring systems are better at characterising long-term performance than ad hoc measurement strategies using precision equipment. Low-cost pervasive monitoring technologies therefore offer a unique opportunity to improve our quantitative understanding of, and response to, indoor environmental quality issues.

Modeling of window behavior is a key component for building performance simulation, due to the significant impact of opening/closing windows on indoor environment and energy consumption. The predictions of existing models cannot well reflect actual window behavior, the prediction accuracy still needs to be improved. The Gauss distribution model is a new machine-learning technique which has achieved successful applications in many fields because of its special advantages (i.e. simple structure, strong operability and flexible nonparametric inference ability) compared to existing models. This paper presents results from a study using the Gauss distribution model to predict window behavior in office building. The data used in this study were from a real building located in Beijing, China, and covered two transitional seasons (from October 1 to November 15, 2014 and from March 15 to May 16, 2015), when natural ventilation was fully applied. When modeling, three types of input variables, i.e., indoor temperature, outdoor temperature and their combination were used. This work validates the importance of selecting suitable input variables when developing Gauss distribution model. This study also compared the prediction performance between the Gauss distribution modeling approach and the Logistic regression modeling approach, which is the most popular method used to model occupant window behavior in buildings. The results showed that Gauss distribution models could provide higher prediction accuracy, with 9.5% higher than Logistic regression model when using suitable inputs. This paper provided a novel modeling method that can be used to predict window states more accurately in office buildings.

Expansion of modern cities reduces green areas, especially within city centres where the urban heat island has become a significant problem. In an attempt to increase greenery in cityscapes and to provide passive cooling, vertical greenery systems (VGS), an old practice of covering building façades with plants, are receiving attention from architects, engineers, building planners and researchers. This paper systematically reviews available publications on VGS and classifies them according to 13 distinct themes. Research into VGS has increased over recent years and the trend shows the approach to this field of research is changing. Thermal research remains the most prevalent theme compared to others, representing almost half of all publications (76 out of 166), with the top three most highly-cited articles all related to thermal properties of VGS. Nevertheless, the systematic review shows a strong trend of diversification into cross-disciplinary research. The proportion of VGS papers reporting on two or more themes has grown from 25% in 2011 to more than 60% in 2017. The review has revealed that among the limiting factors to VGS are cost and maintenance. The outcomes of this systematic review allow recommendations to be made to architects, designers, planners and owners of VGS regarding the need to account for maintenance in the overall design and operation of these systems. On the basis of this review, future research into VGSs will be increasingly multidisciplinary and will need to consider the interconnected dimensions of the system and how they determine both its cost and effectiveness Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Various organizations and societies around the globe have issued guidelines in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and virus (SARS-CoV-2). In this paper, heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning-related guidelines or documents in several major countries and regions have been reviewed and compared, including those issued by the American Society of Heating Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, the Federation of European Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning Associations, the Society of Heating, Air-Conditioning and Sanitary Engineers of Japan, Architectural Society of China, and the Chinese Institute of Refrigeration. Most terms and suggestions in these guidelines are consistent with each other, although there are some conflicting details, reflecting the underlying uncertainty surrounding the transmission mechanism and characteristics of COVID-19 in buildings. All guidelines emphasize the importance of ventilation, but the specific ventilation rate that can eliminate the risk of transmission of airborne particulate matter has not been established. The most important countermeasure, commonly agreed countermeasures, the conflicting content from different guidelines, and further work have been summarized in this paper.

This paper investigates a new technology for Hybrid flexible delivery (known as HyFlex), as implemented at King's College London. The relatively novel character of HyFlex, of mixing synchronously on-line and in-room teaching, and the recent changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic mean this use of the technology and teaching model is largely new to the UK. This research evaluated audio quality in the context of a HyFlex technical environment. The paper provides a high-level overview of the process of designing a HyFlex solution and presents a detailed evaluation of the impact of reverberation in relation to the accuracy of automatically generated subtitles and the influence of microphone selection. The paper shows that there was a significant relationship between the reverberation, the audio quality, and the subtitling system, which is important as past studies highlighted audio quality is key for the students' experience. It presents a viable and simple methodology to estimate the audio quality on installed HyFlex systems to improve the students experience in a hybrid teaching environment.

Visualization and presentation techniques are experiencing a rapid development and application in the architectural profession and beyond. As such, Stereoscopic Images (SI) and Virtual Reality (VR), both advanced visualization techniques, have found their way in daylighting research. This paper explores the correspondence between these two techniques using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The study focused on two small rooms with the same dimensions, with alternately white and black surfaces, and three different windows sizes. Seven architectural qualities were studied: Pleasantness, Calmness, Interest, Excitement, Complexity, Spaciousness, and Amount of View. The attributes were evaluated by 20 participants using a Likert-type scale. The collected data was analyzed using Wilcoxon signed-rank tests and the Bland-Altman method. The results revealed that the attributes Pleasantness, Calmness, Interest, and Complexity in rooms with both white and black surfaces, and Excitement and Spaciousness in a room with white surfaces are evaluated similarly in both VR and SI. The attributes Excitement and Spaciousness in a room with black surfaces and the Amount of View in rooms with both white and black surfaces were not evaluated similarly with both methods. In addition, qualitative results indicated that the visualization technique affects how a space is perceived. Indeed, the Virtual Reality's nature as an immersive environment provides the feeling of ‘presence’ which does not apply to SI. The results of this paper can help researchers working with daylighting in buildings in selecting the appropriate visualization technique to reduce experimental and logistical constraints caused by varying daylight conditions.

Funding Information: First and foremost, we are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for improving the paper quality. Thank Ahmed Al-Azawi, Mostafa Kadhem Al-Baaiti and Liath M. Al-Musawy from the ministry of education for their help in collecting the data. Additionally, thank Basheer Khalid, Ali Jaber Oudah and Ghazwan Hussein Hamza for their effort in logistic support. The views in this manuscript are those of the authors, and they do not reflect those of other agencies. Additionally, this study has not received any specific grants. We also declare no conflict of interest. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 Elsevier Ltd Particulate matter (PM) is a major indicator of urban air quality deterioration due to its impact on human health, atmospheric visibility and climate change. However, sufficient data on personal exposure to air pollution is still rare or unavailable in developing countries such as Iraq. Thus, this paper investigated the personal exposure and inhalation doses of PM1 and PM2.5 in Al-Hillah city, Iraq, for four common motorized transportation modes, namely open windows car, closed window car, bus, and motorbike. A portable monitoring device was used to collect the data during morning and afternoon hours in two main streets in the city. A t-test examination of the obtained results showed that the mean exposure concentration for both PM2.5 and PM1 were significantly different in the two streets form most of the transportation modes. The difference in the means of the measured PM1 and PM2.5 in the morning and afternoon trips were statistically significant for all the transportation modes except for bus in 60 street. This highlights the special and temporal variation of air pollution in the city. This is largely due the deteriorated infrastructure and lack of control policies in the city. Overall, PM2.5 and PM1 measured exposure concentrations were higher in the morning trips than in the afternoon ones. Regardless of the time or place of measurements, closed windows cars always had the lowest exposure concentrations to PM1 and PM2.5. The alarming observation in this study was the high levels of PM1 and PM2.5 that exceeded the recommended WHO limits, and were higher than the reported concentrations in the world bank database. The study findings present preliminary data on personal exposure concentrations and inhalation doses for travelers in Al-Hillah city, which can be utilized for global studies of air contamination in countries in similar situations as Iraq and for developing local control strategies.

The thermal environment experienced by human is significantly affected by the radiant heat. Information regarding the effect of radiant temperature on the occupants in a building is necessary for a comprehensive evaluation of indoor thermal comfort and for a corresponding control of the building's passive and active systems. This paper presents a real-time estimation method of MRT distributions in indoor spaces that does not require a direct installation of measurement devices at occupant locations. To consider the effect of longwave radiation, a pan-tilt IR camera was applied to remotely measure interior surface temperatures. For shortwave radiation, a single pyranometer installed outside was applied to estimate diffuse and direct irradiance at the occupant locations. The real-time MRT monitoring process and the Pan-tilt IR scanning system⁺ are derived. An experiment was performed to validate the applicability of the derived MRT monitoring process. The MRT at three target locations were measured by a globe thermometer and also estimated by the derived method. The measured and estimated MRT values were compared, and the results showed high goodness of fits as the R2 values were higher than 0.80 for all target locations. The monitoring results confirm that the MRT value can differ up to 15 °C according to occupant locations because of solar radiation. This paper discusses the applicability in various fields and possible future works of the proposed MRT estimation process.

Evaporative cooling has been considered a low energy consumption process that often is associated with displacement ventilation and passive cooling strategies of buildings. While significant energy savings can be accrued from using evaporative cooling, there are many design challenges to improve the processes of heat and mass transfer and reduce design complexities. This paper seeks to advance the design of evaporative cooling through building and testing a novel regenerative evaporative cooler prototype. It proposes a design that integrates heat pipe and porous ceramic tube modules as an alternative to plate heat exchangers. The paper describes design arrangement of the cooler, a mathematical model and laboratory test results. Under controlled laboratory test conditions, the measured performance indices of wet bulb effectiveness, specific cooling capacity and coefficient of performance (COP) were determined as 0.8, 140 W per m2 of wet ceramic surface area and 11.43 respectively. Furthermore, experimental results show that under typical ambient conditions commensurate with that prevailing in arid climates, the cooler air supply temperature was as much as 14 ?C below that of the ambient air. This publication was made possible by NPRP grant No. 4 -407 -2 -153 from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors. Scopus

This paper aims to provide an overview of various aspects used to measure the overall lighting quality, instead of solely focusing on a single aspect. Lighting quality is a concept that allows excellent vision while providing high comfort. However, it cannot be measured directly; although, it can be indicated by measuring different aspects of lighting quality individually. By reviewing thirty eligible studies, based on forward and backward citation, eleven lighting quality aspects were determined that influence the overall lighting quality. Preferably, control algorithms for high quality lighting implement all these aspects; however, current control algorithms generally have a limited focus on energy or one or two specific aspects. Consequently, these control algorithms do not necessarily provide high quality lighting. This paper reviews measurement methodologies for the variable aspects of lighting quality, namely quantity, distribution, glare, spectral power distribution, daylight, directionality, and dynamics. We distinguish ad hoc and continuous measurements for each aspect. Ad hoc measurements are single measurements that provide a high accuracy “snapshot”; continuous measurements have a lower accuracy but provide a good overview over time that is relevant as input for lighting control algorithms optimizing the lighting quality. This overview shows that luminance distribution measurement devices are highly suitable for measuring lighting quality for both ad hoc and continuous measurements. Except the spectral power distribution, all variable aspects of lighting quality can be measured using such a device although the aspects directionality and dynamics still require more suitable luminance based indicators. Hence, it can be concluded that a luminance distribution measurement device is very suitable device to provide relevant input for lighting quality control algorithms.

This paper presents a new method for developing personalized visual satisfaction profiles in private daylit offices using Bayesian inference. Unlike previous studies based on action data, a set of experiments with human subjects and changing visual conditions were conducted to collect comparative preference data. The likelihood function was defined by linking comparative visual preference data with the visual satisfaction utility function using a probit model structure. A parametrized Gaussian bell function was adopted for the latent satisfaction utility model, based on our belief that each person has a specific set of neighboring visual conditions that are most preferred. Distinct visual preference profiles were inferred with a Bayesian approach using the experimental data. The inferred visual satisfaction utility functions and the model performance results reflect the ability of the models to discover different personalized visual satisfaction profiles. The method presented in this paper will serve as a paradigm for developing personalized preference models, for potential use in personalized controls, balancing human satisfaction with indoor environmental conditions and energy use considerations.

The high-energy consumption of the architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) industry and associated environmental pollution have become a global challenge, and governments at different levels in China have been dedicated to improving the industry's sustainability. However, although the concept of green building (GB) has been growing rapidly, the primarily emphasis has been on energy-saving design with little attention paid to sustainable post-occupancy operations, which is hindering further development. To address this fundamental issue it is necessary to evaluate the post-occupancy performance of GB and, given China's current circumstances, one that involves the participation of all stakeholders to avoid being dominated by construction professionals. However, such participatory evaluations are currently very limited and perfunctory in the country, usually involving simply informing or placating the stakeholders. In response, this paper develops a comprehensive quantitative method to analyze stakeholder impact during GB post-occupancy evaluation (POE). This enables the various stakeholder groups to be prioritized in terms of their influence levels and hence contributes to maximizing overall stakeholder satisfaction by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the evaluation. The findings of the paper are expected to help clients and design teams improve their building designs by integrating the views of stakeholders through the POE in order to realize the true spirit of GB development.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the built environment is key to mitigating climate change. This paper uses Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to explore whether glue-laminated timber (glulam) has a significantly lower whole-life embodied carbon (Global Warming Potential; GWP) than functionally-equivalent structural steel. Alongside a baseline assessment that follows standard practice, a variety of further sensitivity analyses establish how differing assumptions affect results. Assessment found that the GWPs were highly dependent on: (1) the assumed end-of-life scenarios; (2) the approach used to consider biogenic CO2, and; (3) whether the timing of emissions was considered. In general, glulam had the lowest GWP when incinerated (with energy recovery) at end-of-life. However, when recycling is modelled according to current standards, glulam GWPs were in amongst those of steel, giving no clear ranking of materials. Landfilled glulam had a lower GWP than steel if some biogenic carbon was assumed to be permanently stored. That may be appropriate given recent guidance from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but is not allowed in the updated standards for LCA of construction products (e.g. EN 15804:2019). Six additional impact categories were also assessed to give a broader environmental comparison. The relative impact of the two materials depended on the impact category assessed, with glulam generally having a similar or lower impact than steel. Given the findings of this paper, further research on end-of-life treatment and LCA methodology is critical to ensure that strategies aiming to reduce GWP by material selection are effective in practice.

The majority of the techniques in the building comfort monitoring state-of-the-art are based on local/manual measurements or on permanent sensor networks. These techniques entail imprecision and randomness (in the first case) and high-cost installations and a lack of flexibility to eventual changes in buildings (in the second). However, intelligent mobile platforms are becoming significantly more important as they perform data acquisition adapted to specific scenarios and schedules. In this paper, we present a robotic platform focused on performing the workplace occupant comfort-monitoring process. The soundness of our proposal compared to others lies on that it gathers most of the necessary properties of an effective monitoring platform: it collects a wider range of variables; it autonomously navigates in inhabited buildings managing occlusions and unexpected events; it conducts multiple monitoring sessions in one or several days; it provides comfort evaluations. Additionally, it can be very useful for energy engineers and construction professional as it provides valuable information in regard to comfort: it detects the best/worst results of the tested variables, locates discomfort in specific areas and moments, recognizes discomfort patterns and globally classifies zones into comfort classes. This robotic platform has been successfully tested in the interiors of buildings, providing significant and clear results in comfort terms (a case study is presented in this paper). However, some limitations and improvements should be addressed. Among other aspects, the computer-robot communication robustness for long distances and the procedure for detecting of small obstacles must be improved in the future.

This paper presents an evaluation of the indoor radon spatial variation between and within school buildings. Radon measurements were carried out in 331 rooms of 16 school buildings in 5 municipalities of Plovdiv province, Bulgaria. They were performed with CR-39 nuclear track detectors exposed over an 8-month period from September 2018 to April 2019. The arithmetic and geometric means together with corresponding standard deviation and geometric standard deviations of the indoor radon concentration were 160 ± 175 Bq/m3 and 108 */2.35 Bq/m3, respectively. The best data fit was achieved with a Weibull 3-parameter function (Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, p = 0.2916). The effect of the school location and various building characteristics on the indoor radon concentration distribution within a province was investigated. The analyses showed that the factor “year of building construction”, which is in general related with the technical condition of the building, imposed the highest impact on the indoor radon concentration difference between schools. The vertical and horizontal components of the indoor radon spatial variability within a school were analysed as well. The results concerning the radon variation within schools could be used to optimize future radon school surveys. In this paper, quality control for indoor radon measurement procedures and radon health impact assessments was included.

Rapid deduction based on environmental data has become a key factor influencing the early stages of conceptual design decisions. Traditional wind tunnels and CFD computational tools are time-consuming and number-limited of assumptions in iterative design, hence both are more commonly used in post-evaluation. With the development of artificial intelligence, this paper presented a new cyborg-physical wind tunnel (CPWT) design platform. By combining a customized physical wind tunnel with an optimization algorithm, a large amount of physical data can be quickly derived, and evaluations and predictions can be made. This paper first introduces the concepts of wind environment performance-based design including the physical platform design and the sensing system. The design methodology is reviewed in three sections: deduction framework, optimization goal, and evaluation indicator. Then, the paper proposed a new wind tunnel device, the CPWT, which incorporates 120 dynamic lifting units equipped with sensor, Arduino, and servomotor to capture wind data and generate real-time responses. Artificial neural network is integrated in the experiment to train on data like the windward area index and staggering index for the morphology generation. The result demonstrated that the mean square error is able to quickly stabilize to the range of [-0.02783, 0.02892] and [-2.324, 2.845], which achieved a lower data error and a better result predictability. The enhanced sensibility and real-time feedback are able to provide a more rapid method for the wind environment performance-based design in this digital age.

Thermal comfort is one of the most important factors of indoor environment quality, affecting occupants’ well-being and work efficiency. With the advent of smart control technology, personalized and intelligent air conditioners have been promoted for occupant-centric intelligent air-conditioning control. Based on commonly used air-conditioning (AC), this paper quantitatively describes the method for occupant thermal preference adaptation, and proposes a rule-based classification method of occupant thermal preference recognition. With the quantitative description and classification of the occupant thermal preference, this paper proposes a multi-step input control method for an occupant-centric fan-coil system. This method provides an indoor thermal environment that fulfills the demands of different preferences and is easy to implement with existing air-conditioning control systems without additional sensors. To perform an application-oriented, closed-loop research of the proposed control method, two predictionmodels of occupant thermal preferences are developed based on an occupant behavior dataset and they could be used as the well initialized models for future online tunning by continually accumulated dataset. Moreover, aiming for a practical operation guide for conventional occupant-centric air-conditioning systems, this paper validates the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed multi-step input control method, integrated with occupant thermal preference recognition. This was done by using Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) control experiments and Simulink simulations of an actual personal office room, equipped with a fan-coil unit (FCU) in Shanghai. The research results indicate that dynamic indoor air temperature response with different air-conditioning control modes can meet the control needs of different occupant thermal preference patterns.

Classrooms in Southern Europe are traditionally ventilated with manual opening of windows. This is an energy-sparing and perfectly appropriate way of ventilating classrooms when weather conditions are warm, however, as outdoor air temperatures drop, teaching staff and students tend to leave windows closed and, as a consequence, ventilation rates fall leading to poor indoor air quality. To safeguard classrooms' indoor air quality and promote energy conservation, understanding the conditions for which manual window-airing is appropriate is of great relevance. Yet, given the stochastic nature of window-airing, it is difficult to get hold of this understanding. The main objective of this paper is to find out when manual window-airing of classrooms is appropriate. To achieve this objective, four free-running classrooms of a Portuguese public secondary school were monitored during a two-year period. Ventilation rates were determined and it is concluded that manual opening of windows provides appropriate ventilation for outdoor running mean temperatures larger than 19 °C. When outdoor running mean temperatures are lower than 16 °C, manual window-airing becomes inappropriate and, for outdoor running mean temperatures between 16 and 19 °C, appropriate manual window-airing depends on the indoor air temperature. For the studied classrooms, these results translate into appropriate ventilation for approximately a quarter of the academic year. Because of the significance of this finding, the paper concludes with a review of the ventilation strategy used in the studied classrooms.

A substantial amount of studies have addressed the influence of sound on human performance. In many of these, however, the large acoustic differences between experimental conditions prevent a direct translation of the results to realistic effects of room acoustic interventions. This review identifies those studies which can be, in principle, translated to (changes in) room acoustic parameters and adds to the knowledge about the influence of the indoor sound environment on people. The review procedure is based on the effect room acoustics can have on the relevant quantifiers of the sound environment in a room or space. 272 papers containing empirical findings on the influence of sound or noise on some measure of human performance were found. Of these, only 12 papers complied with this review's criteria. A conceptual framework is suggested based on the analysis of results, positioning the role of room acoustics in the influence of sound on task performance. Furthermore, valuable insights are presented that can be used in future studies on this topic. While the influence of the sound environment on performance is clearly an issue in many situations, evidence regarding the effectiveness of strategies to control the sound environment by room acoustic design is lacking and should be a focus area in future studies.KeywordsNoise; Human performance; Sound environment; Speech intelligibility; Sound level

This paper presents a new data-driven method for learning personalized thermal preference profiles, by formulating a combined classification and inference problem, without developing different models for each occupant. Different from existing approaches, we developed a generalized thermal preference model in which our main hypothesis, “Different people prefer different thermal conditions”, is explicitly encoded. The approach is fully Bayesian, and it is based on the premise that the thermal preference is mainly governed by (i) an overall thermal stress, represented using physical process equations with relatively few parameters along with prior knowledge of the parameters, and (ii) the personal thermal preference characteristic, which is modeled as a hidden random variable. The concept of clustering occupants based on this hidden variable, i.e., similar thermal preference characteristic, is introduced. The results, based on a dataset collected from a typical office building population, show clear evidence of the existence of multi-clusters; in particular, the 5-cluster model performed best compared to 2, 3 and higher cluster models using the studied dataset. Subsequently, the thermal preference of a new occupant in the dataset is inferred by using a mixture of the general sub-models for each cluster. The results show that the method developed in this study provides accurate predictions for personalized thermal preference profiles and it is efficient as it only requires a relatively small dataset collected from each occupant. The approach presented in this paper is a significant step towards personalized environments in office buildings using real-time feedback from occupants.

This paper presents the development of stochastic models of occupants' main bedroom window operation based on measurements collected in ten UK dwellings over a period of a year. The study uses multivariate logistic regression to understand the probability of opening and closing windows based on indoor and outdoor environment factors (physical environmental drivers) and according to the time of the day and season (contextual drivers). To the authors' knowledge, these are the first models of window opening and closing behaviour developed for UK residential buildings. The work reported in this paper suggests that occupants' main bedroom window operation is influenced by a range of physical environmental (i.e. indoor and outdoor air temperature and relative humidity, wind speed, solar radiation and rainfall) and contextual variables (i.e. time of day and season). In addition, the effects of the physical environmental variables were observed to vary in relation to the contextual factors. The models provided in this work can be used to calculate the probability that the main bedroom window will be opened or closed in the next 10 min. These models could be used in building performance simulation applications to improve the inputs for occupants' window opening and closing behaviour and thus the predictions of energy use and indoor environmental conditions of residential buildings.

Offices are transforming into multi-user, open space environments to stimulate interaction between people and optimize the usage of space. Due to design practices, lighting systems in these multi-user environments are implemented as a regular grid of luminaires that often does not match the furniture layout. Consequently, purely personal control over general lighting is not achievable in most cases. As a result, a single luminaire affects several neighbouring desks, creating shared lighting controls and conditions. Therefore, providing satisfying lighting conditions to everyone becomes a challenge. This paper proposes a first method for modelling lighting preference profiles of users based on their controlbehaviour and preference information. Based on objective measurements and subjective data obtained in two field studies, users can be profiled based on their control behaviour, regarding characteristics as activeness, dominance, lighting tolerance, and dimming level preference. The results show significant differences between lighting preference profiles of users. This paper also proposes a first method for discovering and triggering submissive users to express their preferences in order to derive their profiles as accurate as possible. This will help to secure users' comfort by offering satisfying lighting conditions to their preference. By knowing the lighting preference profiles of users, the probability of conflict between users can be predicted and minimized.

For visual quality, the traditional focus on illuminance for paper-based tasks and brightness contrast for visual acuity is becoming less relevant in modern offices with backlit computer screens and sporadic use of paper. This research aims to investigate critical correlations between user satisfaction, workstation lighting conditions, and the physical attributes of the work area. The statistical analyses were conducted to identify applicable recommendations leading to improved visual quality in today's work environment while maintaining optimal user satisfaction.\ud \ud \ud \ud Findings from post-occupancy evaluation on 1232 workstations in 64 office buildings revealed that satisfaction level would increase by 20% on average when the occupants have seated view to the outside in their work area. Upgrading the ceiling light fixture with the indirect lens type could increase visual satisfaction. In particular, workstations with the indirect lens type had higher satisfaction (62%), while the prismatic ceiling lens type showed the lowest user satisfaction (34%). The analysis further identified that a combination of indirect light fixtures with task lights could increase user satisfaction by 21%. Lastly, utilizing window shading devices revealed greater satisfaction with glare management. The occupants who have external and internal shading devices in their work areas showed the highest satisfaction with their overall lighting. In addition to the recommendations mentioned above, the illuminance level identified to achieve maximum satisfaction is 406 lux for the work surface in contemporary office environments.

A correct design of a timbre frame wall’s composition is vital to avoid moisture damage. Unfortunately, currently, no general guidelines exist to determine the most optimal wall composition in a specific context. To develop such general guidelines, a comprehensive study is required, taking into account the inherent uncertainty and variability of involved input parameters. Such a probabilistic assessment is typically carried out through a Monte-Carlo approach, which easily becomes computationally inhibitive. This paper thus makes use of a metamodel, which mimics the complex hygrothermal model while being considerably faster. The authors previously developed a convolutional neural network and demonstrated its’ capacity to predict the highly non-linear hygrothermal response of a massive masonry wall. In this paper, this network is adapted to predict the hygrothermal response for timber frame walls. A hyper-parameter optimisation is performed, leading to rules-of-thumb on the network architecture. It is shown that the network can accurately predict the hygrothermal time series, and that it can be employed with confidence to estimate the moisture damage risks. Subsequently, the network is used to calculate the hygrothermal response of 96 timber frame wall types, taking into account all influencing uncertainties. The results indicated that timber frame wall compositions should not be recommend based solely on the 𝑠𝑑-ratio between vapour and wind barrier. A lower limit for the 𝑠𝑑-ratio appears a good criterion to avoid mould growth, if adapted to the climate and cladding type. To avoid condensation, one should ensure either the insulation or the wind barrier can buffer the excess moisture. ispartof: Building And Environment vol:193 status: Published online

Motivated by the increasing interest on passive control solutions to lower pollutant concentrations in cities, this paper introduces a novel methodology to demonstrate the potential of photocatalytic coatings in abating air pollution in real-world urban environments. The methodology introduced in this paper is based on an original application of Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) modelling to simulate the effect of photocatalytic coatings in real yet simplified urban setting. The numerical approach is validated against observations gathered during an ad-hoc designed intensive experimental campaign performed in a real urban area in the city of Bologna, Italy (44.5075 N, 11.3514E), under semi-controlled conditions. Comparison of the model output with observations show a concentration reduction in the range 10–20%. After validation and choice of the proper model set-up, numerical simulations are analyzed by focusing on the mechanisms enhancing the flow circulation within the canyon, an effect that may increase the effect of coatings within street canyons. Results show that application of photocatalytic coatings can give pollutant reductions up to 50% in a confined region close to the walls. A parametrization for the pollutant reduction within the street canyon is suggested to summarize these results, providing a characterization of the photocatalytic coatings performances as a function of the geometric characteristic of the street canyon.

The fine particulate matter, generally known as PM2.5, has great impact on the air quality and human health. Although closing external windows can help prevent outdoor PM2.5 going into indoors, many studies have shown that a significant number of particles can still pass the building facade through the cracks around the window. In order to quantify the influence of the external window crack structure and some relevant parameters, such as room dimension, on the indoor PM2.5 mass concentration, this paper introduces an updated model from a previously published paper by the authors [18]. The model was developed based on two-month field measured data from five unoccupied offices located in the central area of Beijing (capital city located in northern China), and then was validated against a new dataset measured in Guangzhou (a major city located in southern China). The model can be used to quantify the indoor PM2.5 mass concentration based on the instant outdoor PM2.5 level, considering influences from external window crack structure, room dimension and outdoor meteorological conditions, i.e. outdoor wind speed and relative humidity.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is globally recognized as one of the most complete methods for environmental assessment of buildings. Literature assumes that its applications in the building sector are prejudiced regarding complexity and difficulty. However, simplification is necessary, since it can facilitate LCA application in buildings. Moreover, growing interest on reducing environmental impact in the building sector, as well as the relevance of single-family houses on CO 2 emissions have become key points on the wide spread of LCA. Therefore, this paper presents a research study about simplification in LCA recent studies applied to single-family houses. The review focuses on 20 cases that were analyzed according to ISO 14040, ISO 14044, EN 15978, and EN 15804 standards. The main objective was to identify the simplification strategies assumed in each paper, to clarify and to help to promote further developments on LCA. This paper examines system boundary definition, data sources, life cycle phases included, and environmental impact indicator calculated in case studies. Results show the variety of simplifications identified. They affect physical model definition, life cycle scenario definition and communication of results. In most cases, the functional unit was the complete building, the life cycle scenario definition included production, use and demolition phases, and the most considered environmental impact indicator was GWP. Finally, new challenges and recommendations were defined in order to establish common criteria to develop simplification strategies that allow results comparability in LCA of single-family houses.

This paper presents a framework for the development of early-design guidance to inform architects and policy-makers using parametric whole-building energy simulation. It includes a case study of a prototype multifamily residential building, using an exhaustive search method and a total of 90,000+ simulations. The authors performed a simple sensitivity analysis to identify the most influential of the tested design parameters on energy use intensity, which included WWR, Glass Type, Building Rotation, Building Shape, and Wall Insulation, in that order. They identified synergies and trade-offs when designing for different energy objectives, including (a) decreasing Energy Use Intensity, (b) reducing peak-loads, and (c) increasing passive survivability – i.e., maintaining the safest interior temperatures in an extended power outage. This paper also investigated the effect of urban context as a source of sun shading and found it to have a substantial impact on the design optimization. Ignoring urban context in energy simulation, a common practice, would mislead designers in some cases and result in sub-optimal design decisions. Since in generalized guidelines the future building site is unknown, the authors tested a method for generating urban contexts based on the floor area ratio and maximum building heights of an urban district.