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Previous studies have demonstrated the energy- and water-saving potentials of showering facilities in residential buildings. However, the prospect of public showering places where multiple showerheads usually worked together according to their opening hours has often been overlooked and rarely investigated. This study measured the water flow rate in a water supply pipe to understand the water-use patterns and water consumption of showering facilities in a swimming pool. The measurements were carried out on typical cold and warm days. The results showed that the average water consumption was 50.5 L/person in December (T = 19.7 °C) and 38.6 L/person in April (T = 24.5 °C). The fluctuation of the water flow rate demonstrated a water demand pattern for the showering facilities, where the maximum water flow rate was more than twice the average level, indicating inefficient working modes of the water supply pump. To improve the current situation, an appropriately sized water tank was suggested to be installed, which could ensure a more stable water flow rate in the main supply pipe, enhancing the water supply system efficiency and saving energy for the water pump. These results contribute to establishing the design data for optimizing water tank design in swimming pools or similar buildings with public showering demand and illustrate the energy-saving potential of water supply systems in showering facilities. Nevertheless, the results of this study are only based on theoretical calculations. More comprehensive field studies with a water tank are required to confirm these findings and better elucidate the effects.

The electrocatalytic carbon dioxide reduction reaction (CO2RR) producing HCOOH and CO is one of the most promising approaches for storing renewable electricity as chemical energy in fuels. SnO2 is a good catalyst for CO2-to-HCOOH or CO2-to-CO conversion, with different crystal planes participating the catalytic process. Among them, (110) surface SnO2 is very stable and easy to synthesisze. By changing the ratio of Sn:O for SnO2(110), we have two typical SnO2 thin films: fully oxidized (stoichiometric) and partially reduced. In this work, we are concerned with different metals (Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Ru, Rh, Pd, Ag, Os, Ir, Pt, and Au)-doped SnO2(110) with different activity and selectivity for CO2RR. All these changes are manipulated by adjusting the ratio of Sn:O in (110) surface. The results show that stochiometric and reduced Cu/Ag doped SnO2(110) have different selectivity for CO2RR. More specifically, stochiometric Cu/Ag-doped SnO2(110) tends to generate CO(g). Meanwhile, the reduced surface tends to generate HCOOH(g). Moreover, we also considered the competitive hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). The catalysts SnO2(110) doped by Ru, Rh, Pd, Os, Ir, and Pt have high activity for HER, and others are good catalysts for CO2RR.

The past decade has seen an increasing interest in designing sophisticated density functional approximations (DFAs) by integrating the power of machine learning (ML) techniques. However, application of the ML-based DFAs is often confined to simple model systems. In this work, we construct an ML correction to the widely used Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) functional by establishing a semilocal mapping from the electron density and reduced gradient to the exchange-correlation energy density. The resulting ML-corrected PBE is immediately applicable to any real molecule, and yields significantly improved heats of formation while preserving the accuracy for other thermochemical and kinetic properties. This work highlights the prospect of combining the power of data-driven ML methods with physics-inspired derivations for reaching the heaven of chemical accuracy.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the ventilation of school buildings has attracted considerable attention from the general public and researchers. However, guidance to assess the ventilation performance in classrooms, especially during a pandemic, is still lacking. Therefore, aiming to fill this gap, this study conducted a full-scale laboratory study to monitor the CO2 concentrations at 18 locations in a classroom setting under four different ventilation regimes. Additionally, a field study was carried out in two Dutch secondary schools to monitor the CO2 concentrations in the real classrooms with different ventilation regimes. Both the laboratory and field study findings showed that CO2 concentrations varied a lot between different locations in the same room, especially under natural ventilation conditions. The outcome demonstrates the need of monitoring the CO2 concentration at more than one location in a classroom. Moreover, the monitored CO2 concentration patterns for different ventilation regimes were used to determine the most representative location for CO2 monitoring in classrooms. For naturally ventilated classrooms, the location on the wall opposite to windows and the location on the front wall (nearby the teacher) were recommended. For mechanically ventilated classrooms, one measurement location seemed enough because CO2 was well-mixed under this ventilation regime.

Sounds (e.g., human activity, nature, building systems) are one of the indoor environmental stimuli that may have positive and/or negative effects on students’ well-being and performance in educational buildings. Students in educational buildings have individual acoustical preferences and needs as portrayed by occupant-related indicators, for example perception. Acoustical guidelines for educational buildings are generally focused on acoustical performance in terms of dose-related (e.g., sound pressure level) and building-related indicators (e.g., sound absorbing walls), while occupant-related indicators (e.g., heart rate) are rarely mentioned. In contrast, previous studies such as indoor soundscape studies, do take into consideration occupant-related indicators, including physiological and psychological. Therefore, this study aimed at summarizing these indicators in a comprehensive overview that is essential for investigating the students’ acoustical preferences and needs in educational buildings. A literature review of relevant studies in the domain of indoor acoustics and soundscape was carried out. A number of key indicators (occupant-related, dose-related, building-related) and methods that are fundamental to be considered were identified. Only in a few studies, students’ acoustical preferences and needs were investigated by considering occupant-related indicators (both physiological and psychological). In addition, dose-related indicators of other indoor environmental quality (IEQ) factors and building-related indicators were rarely taken into account in previous studies.

Recent studies have shown that both personal and building-related factors may affect the health and comfort of occupants in their homes. It is also known that people differ in their needs and can therefore respond differently to these stressors. Therefore, based on the large database from the survey conducted yearly from 2016 to 2020 among the first-year students of the faculty of Architecture and the Built environment at the Delft University of Technology, this study aimed to explore the associations between self-reported rhinitis/stuffy nose/migraine/headache, and the indoor environment of the students' homes, taking into account potential confounders and profiles. Two-steps cluster analysis resulted in three profiles of students based on their IEQ-related perceptions: Cluster 1 with the highest reported percentage of symptoms and the lowest reported percentage of diseases; Cluster 2 with moderate reported symptoms and diseases; and Cluster 3 with the lowest percentage of reported symptoms and the highest percentage of reported diseases. Logistic regression modelling showed that risk factors contributing to having rhinitis, stuffy nose, migraine and/or headache, differ per cluster, and showed little overlap with the all-respondents group. Moreover, when there is an overlap, the associated risk factor might increase the risk for one cluster, while for another it decreases the risk, indicating differences in response between the different clusters; and therefore, the importance of clustering instead of considering all respondents as one.

Airborne transmission has been confirmed as one of three principal ways of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. To reduce the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 indoors, understanding the distribution of respiratory droplets (or aerosols) present in human breath seems therefore important. To study whether the CO2 concentration can be used as a proxy for the number of exhaled particles present in an occupied space, the distribution of particles with different diameters (0.3, 0.5, 1.0, 2.5, 5.0 and 10 μm) and CO2 concentrations were monitored in a classroom setting with six healthy subjects. Additionally, numbers of particles with the same sizes were measured in the breath of the same six healthy subjects separately. Results showed that (1) on the contrary to CO2, the main source of indoor particles came from outdoor air, and not from occupants; (2) the impacts of ventilation regimes on indoor particle numbers were different to the impacts on CO2 concentrations; and (3) almost no significant relationship between the number of indoor particles and CO2 concentration was observed. Based on these results, this study could therefore not conclude that the CO2 concentration in a classroom can be used as a proxy for the number of exhaled particles by the occupants.

Because of COVID-19, the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in sports facilities has been a concern to environmental health practitioners. To develop an overall understanding of the available guidelines and standards and studies performed on IEQ in sports facilities, an extensive literature study was conducted, with the aim of identifying: (1) indicators that are being used to assess IEQ in different sports facilities; (2) indicators that are potentially interesting to be used to assess indoor air, in particular; (3) gaps in knowledge to determine whether sports facilities are safe, healthy and comfortable for people to stay and perform their activities. The outcome indicates that most current standards and previous investigations on IEQ in sports facilities mainly focused on dose-related indicators (such as ventilation rate), while building-related indicators (such as ventilation regime) and occupant-related indicators (such as IEQ preferences) were rarely considered. Little attention is given to the fact that ventilation systems may play an important role in the air quality of the location, and few investigations have been performed on the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. This study recommends more research into both occupant and building-related indicators as well as cross-modal effects between various IEQ factors for developing future standards on sports facilities.

The acoustic conditions of classrooms received a lot of attention in the last decades because of its important role in school children’s comfort and performance. In a previous field study of 54 classrooms from 21 schools in the Netherlands, more than 85% of the 1145 primary school children reported that they were bothered by noise in the classroom. The objective of this study is to identify the effect of background sounds on children’s performance, sound evaluation and influence assessment based on a lab study conducted in the SenseLab. 335 school children (9 to 13 years old) from the previous studied schools participated in the lab study. They were subjected to a series of listening tests and evaluations in two acoustic test chambers (acoustically treated or untreated) with one of seven randomly played background sounds: 45 dB(A) or 60 dB(A) traffic noise, 45 dB(A) or 60 dB(A) children talking, 45 dB(A) or 60 dB(A) music, or no sound (≈30 dB(A)). A two-way ANOVA was applied to analyse the interaction effect of sound type and sound pressure level (SPL) on children’s performance, sound evaluation and influence assessment in each of the chambers. Statistically significant interactions between the impact of sound type and SPL on children’s phonological processing performance and their influence assessments were found in the untreated chamber.

To study the combined effect of different environmental factors on children in a classroom setting, 250 children from seven primary schools were exposed to 36 different environmental configurations (‘all’ and ‘fewer’ acoustical panels; ‘displacement’ and ‘mixing’ ventilation; sound type: ‘children talk’, ‘traffic’, and ‘none’; and ‘direct’, ‘indirect’ and ‘soft’ lighting). In a four-way factorial design, they assessed with 18 groups on eight different days temperature, draught, noise, light and smell. Correlation, three-way ANOVA, comparison tests and multi-regression analysis were used to analyse relationships, and main, cross-modal and interaction effects. The results show that more acoustical panels had a positive effect on the children’s assessment of sound. Sound type had a main effect on the assessment of sound. Statistical significant cross-modal effects were found for lighting and sound type on the assessment of smell. Significant three-way interactions between ‘Vent’, ‘Sound’, and ‘Light’ types were found for smell and light in the ‘fewer panels’ situations; and for light in the ‘all panels’ situations. Multiple-regression analysis also showed that perception of smell was significantly related with draught, sound and light perception in ‘fewer panels’ conditions. Further studies on these cross-modal interactions are recommended, specifically at individual level.

Previous studies indicate that acoustic improvements at classroom-level, such as using ceiling panels, do not work well to solve noise problems in classrooms. Therefore, this study introduced a new way – individual control – to improve classroom acoustics. The acoustic effect of five different classroom settings is simulated: two individual-level acoustic improvement settings (“Single-sided canopies” and “Double-sided canopies”), two classroom-level acoustic improvement settings (“Half-ceiling” and “Full-ceiling”), and one “Control” setting. The simulation was accomplished with Computer Aided Theatre Technique (CATT-Acoustic™), which is a ray-tracing-based room acoustics prediction software package. According to the two main ways of using classrooms (instruction and self-study), the simulations were run for two situations: instruction situation and self-study situation, and the Lombard Effect was taken into consideration in the self-study situation. The results showed that in both situations, all of these improvement settings, compared with the “Control” setting, could shorten the reverberation time and increase the speech transmission index, and the improvements caused by the individually controlled canopies were more obvious than caused by the ceiling panels. Additionally, in the instruction situation, the individual-level improvements could increase the sound pressure level of the teacher’s speech, while in the self-study situation, the individual-level improvements could decrease the sound pressure level of other children’s talk. In the future, it is recommended to produce and test different individually controlled devices in a lab or real classroom to verify these results.

A recently published simulation-based study has demonstrated the effect of an individually controlled noise-reducing device (ICND) on improving acoustic quality in classrooms. As a follow-up research, this current study aims to develop a real ICND and test it with its target users-- primary school children. The prototype developed in this study looks like a canopy hanging above a desk, was selected and prototyped. It has two modes, i.e. open and closed, and can be easily changed by a remote controller. With this device, school children can control their local acoustic environment by themselves. More than 200 primary school children have been invited to test two prototypes of this device in the acoustical chamber of the SenseLab. The results showed that 83% of the children liked this device and 61% of them wanted to have it in their own classroom. However, since this is a prototype, there is still room for improvement. Based on the children’s feedback, several suggestions for future modifications have been summarized.

Next to personal, psychosocial and physiological aspects, environmental aspects of homes may affect the health and comfort of their occupants. This study aimed to investigate the multifactorial character of both rhinitis and headaches among five groups of students from universities in five different cities: Taichung (Taiwan), Concepcion (Chile), Paramaribo (Suriname), Beijing (China) and Delft (The Netherlands). Among the students studied, 18% declared having suffered from rhinitis in the last 12 months, and 30% from headaches in the last 3 months. Self-reported characteristics of 682 students and their homes were linked to self-reported rhinitis and headaches. Logistic regression modelling was applied to explore relations between building-related factors and rhinitis, and between building-related factors and headaches. After full adjustment, the regression model for both rhinitis and headaches confirmed their multifactorial character. While personal-related factors family rhinitis and age were associated with rhinitis, negative events and PANAS negative were with headaches. Biological pollutants (caused by pets) were associated both with rhinitis and headaches; chemical pollutants, caused by open bookshelves and lack of sweeping floors, were associated with rhinitis. The study concludes that the identified risk factors seemed independent of season or climate region.

BackgroundWhile the indoor environmental quality of classrooms is a potential issue because it may affect the wellbeing of school children, the relations are still poorly studied. This study aimed to investigate the relations between classroom characteristics and health and comfort of school children.Material and methodsA questionnaire was distributed among 1311 school children (8–12 years old, average 10) of 54 classrooms at 21 schools in The Netherlands. Additionally, the survey included an inspection of the school and its installations and an inspection of the classrooms surveyed using checklists, and monitoring of some environmental parameters (temperature, relative humidity and CO2 concentration) in the classrooms.ResultsAmong the children studied, 87% was bothered by noise, 63% by smells, 42% by sunlight when shining, 35% didn't like the temperature in the classroom (too cold or too warm) and 34% experienced temperature changes. Main diseases reported comprised of allergies (26%), rhinitis (17%), hay fever (16%) and eczema (16%). Health and comfort in non-traditional schools was better than in the traditional schools studied (A non-traditional school is a school in which the way of educating children is different from the traditional way of education, according to a different educational theory). Physical building characteristics of the classrooms studied in the traditional schools were associated with the Classroom Symptom Index (location of school building, heating system, solar devices hampering opening windows or ventilation) and the Classroom Comfort Index (ventilation type, window frame colour, floor material and vacuum cleaning frequency).ConclusionsMeasures to improve acoustical, air, and thermal conditions of children in classrooms are needed. More research is required on the use of different lighting systems and use of different colours in classrooms.

Airborne transmission of small respiratory droplets (i.e., aerosols) is one of the dominant transmission routes of pathogens of several contagious respiratory diseases, which mainly takes place between occupants when sharing indoor spaces. The important role of ventilation in airborne infection control has been extensively discussed in previous studies, yet little attention was paid to the situation in school classrooms, where children spend long hours every day. A literature study was conducted to identify the existing ventilation strategies of school classrooms, to assess their adequacy of minimizing infectious aerosols, and to seek further improvement. It is concluded that school classrooms are usually equipped with natural ventilation or mixing mechanical ventilation, which are not fully capable to deal with both long-range and short-range airborne transmissions. In general, the required ventilation designs, including both ventilation rates and air distribution patterns, are still unclear. Current standards and guidelines of ventilation in school classrooms mainly focus on perceived air quality, while the available ventilation in many schools already fail to meet those criteria, leading to poor indoor air quality (IAQ). New ways of ventilation are needed in school classrooms, where the design should be shifted from comfort-based to health-based. Personalized ventilation systems have shown the potential in protecting occupants from aerosols generated within short-range contact and improving local IAQ, which can be used to compensate the existing ventilation regimes. However, more studies are still needed before such new ventilation methods can be applied to children in school classrooms.

Electron affinity (EA) is the energy released when an additional electron is attached to an atom or a molecule. EA is a fundamental thermochemical property, and it is closely pertinent to other imp...

Literature shows that both building systems and occupants’ behaviour contribute to the amount of energy used to create a comfortable indoor environment. To determine possible relationships, energy consumption of nine school buildings was studied in relation to identified building characteristics, self-reported frequency of teachers’ actions, and (perceived and measured) indoor environmental quality (IEQ) of the school children in the classrooms studied. These schools were located in different areas in the Netherlands, and their yearly energy consumption differed a lot. Results demonstrated significant relationships of electrical energy consumption with lighting distribution in classrooms and the frequency of teachers’ light switch behaviour: the higher the measured illuminance in the classrooms, the more electricity was used in the school building. The more electricity was used, the more children complained about the IEQ in their classrooms; and the more frequently the teachers turned on the light, the less electricity the schools consumed. It was concluded that stimulating teachers to be more active in controlling the light might lead to energy saving, but a larger sample of schools with more variation in buildings systems is required to confirm this.

The study of protective film formation on Mg alloys by exposure to sodium selenite solutions was conducted. Anodic polarization studies, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy studies, morphological analysis, and Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy were performed on AZ31 Mg alloy after coating treatment in different concentrations of sodium selenite. The corrosion resistance was improved by around 5 times compared with control. Improved resistance to localized corrosion was observed in the coatings treated by 5 mM or 10 mM sodium selenite. The protection mechanism was ascribed to the transformation of selenite to insoluble selenium, the formation of insoluble MgSeO3 hydrate, and polymerization of amorphous selenium.

High efficiency air filtration has been suggested to reduce airborne transmission of ‘infectious’ aerosols. In this study the ‘air cleaning’ effect as well as the effect on sound and air velocity (draught risk) of a mobile High-Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filter system was tested for different settings and positions in the Experience room of the SenseLab. From both the noise assessments by a panel of subjects and sound monitoring it was concluded that the mobile HEPA filter system causes an unacceptable background sound level in the tested classroom setting (Experience room). With respect to the air velocity measurements and draught rating calculations, it was concluded that both depend on the position and the setting of the HEPA filter system as well as on the position and height of the measurements. For the removal of aerosols simulated by air-filled soap bubbles in front of the subject, the mobile HEPA filter system performed better as compared to the ‘No ventilation’ regime, for all settings and both positions, and for some settings, even better than all the tested mixing ventilation regimes. The use of a mobile HEPA filter system seems a good additional measure when only natural ventilation options are available. Future research should focus on rooms of different sizes or shapes, as this may also play a role in the filter's performance, noise and draught effects., Highlights • A mobile HEPA filter system is a good additional measure to natural ventilation. • The mobile system can result in unacceptable noise levels and draught effects. • The HEPA filter's cleaning performance depends on setting and position in a room.

To investigate whether different colours of the indoor surfaces could have an effect on thermal comfort of children, 335 primary school children were invited to take part in a series of tests conducted in the thermal test chamber of the SenseLab. A three-way factorial randomized design was used to test the effect of three different colours of walls (white, red and blue) and floor (grey, green and blue) on the temperature and draught feeling in a winter situation (sunlight coming in: heat) and a summer situation (opening window: draught). A statistical relevant relationship between feeling of draught and feeling of temperature was found. Except for a significant difference in temperature feeling for different floor colours when the wall colour was red in the winter situation, no relevant effects (or interaction effects) were found for differences in wall or floor colours on the temperature or draught feeling.

To find out whether a surface finishing was preferred under different lighting conditions by school children, in the light test chamber of the SenseLab, 335 children from previous studied schools were asked to assess a desk surface during different light conditions. A two-way randomized design was used to test children’s assessments for six school desks table tops (brown, yellow and grey wood, and, normal, matt and reflective white), under three different light conditions: energizing, calming, and focusing. A statistically relevant relationship was found for the three wooden surfaces, but none for the white ones. Such results may be due to the fact that better contrast between the participants’ form and the surface appeared with the wooden-like surfaces, as opposed to that with the white surfaces. Similarly, white surfaces’ characteristics seemed to be more difficult to assess (mattness, reflectiveness, opacity) as opposed to those for the wooden-like surfaces (colour yellow, brown, grey).

A previous field study showed that more than 85% of Dutch children reported they were bothered by noise in the classroom. To investigate the impact of acoustical treatment on children’s phoneme identification, 335 school children (9 to 13 years old) from the previously studied schools were invited to take part in a series of tests in the acoustical chamber of the SenseLab. All the children performed two series of listening tests and evaluations in chamber A (untreated) and chamber B (acoustically treated) respectively, while at the same time one of seven background sounds (45dB or 60dB traffic noise, 45dB or 60dB children talking, 45dB or 60dB music, or no sound) were randomly played in the chambers. T-tests were conducted to compare the results of children’s phonological process tasks, sound perceptions, and influence assessments in these two chambers. Results showed a statistically significant difference in children’s sound perceptions (p=0.01). Children reported the untreated chamber A to be noisier.

Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in classrooms can have an effect on school children’s comfort, health, and performance. In most classrooms, the teacher is the only one who can take actions to change the IEQ. The objective of this study was to identify what teachers usually do to improve IEQ in classrooms and how these actions relate to children’s comfort perceptions. A survey was carried out among 1145 school children (9–12 years) in 21 primary schools (54 classrooms) in the Netherlands. Every child filled out a questionnaire about their comfort perception and every teacher filled out a questionnaire about their IEQ-improving actions and school children’s requests to change the IEQ. The relations among children’s comfort perceptions, their requests, and teachers’ actions were analysed through t-tests and chi-squared tests. The most common action conducted by teachers was opening windows because of the ‘too warm’ complaints. Correspondingly, the most frequent request of the children was opening/closing windows because of thermal discomfort. However, the teachers’ actions did not have a significant impact on children’s comfort perceptions, which means that teachers could not fulfil every child’s needs in a classroom, even though teachers’ actions did relate to the child’s requests.

Our sensory system (nose) could predict the perceived odour intensity of various materials relatively well and in many cases the nose seems to be a better receptor of pollutants than some equipment. To test this ability with children, odour tests were performed as part of a study performed with 335 primary school children in the air quality test chamber of the SenseLab. Two similar experiments were conducted to assess the identification of potentially recognizable odours for children. The different sources of odour were placed in different containers and the children were asked how they feel about the smell and to identify the source of smell. There were statistically significant differences among children’s evaluations of different smells and it was difficult for them to identify certain sources of smell.

Delocalization error associated with the presently used density functional approximations is one of the main sources of errors which plague density functional theory calculations. In this paper, we give a comprehensive review on scaling correction (SC) approaches developed recently for reducing the delocalization error. The global and local SC approaches impose the rigorous Perdew-Parr-Levy-Balduz condition that the total electronic energy should scale linearly between integer electron numbers, on systems involving global and local fractional electron distributions, respectively. After presenting the theoretical background and mathematical formulation of scaling corrections, we demonstrate that they lead to universal alleviation of delocalization error. This is exemplified by the substantial improvement for the prediction of a wide range of electronic properties, including Kohn-Sham frontier orbital energies and band gaps, dissociation behavior of molecules, reaction barriers, electric polarizabilities, and charge-transfer species. The encouraging performances of SC approaches highlight their practicality and usefulness, and also affirm that an explicit treatment of fractional electron distributions is essentially important for reducing the intrinsic delocalization error. The existing limitations, the remaining challenges, and the future perspectives of SC are also discussed. Moreover, the SC approaches are compared with some existing methods attempting to remove the self-interaction error, such as the Perdew-Zunger self-interaction correction, the local hybrid hyper-generalized gradient approximations, and the rangeseparated density functional approximations. The unique advantages of SC suggest that it could open a novel and potentially paradigm-changing route for advancing density functional theory methods towards chemical accuracy.

We explore effects of orbital relaxation on Kohn–Sham frontier orbital energies in density functional theory by using a nonempirical scaling correction approach developed in Zheng et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 138, 174105 (2013)]. Relaxation of Kohn–Sham orbitals upon addition/removal of a fractional number of electrons to/from a finite system is determined by a systematic perturbative treatment. The information of orbital relaxation is then used to improve the accuracy of predicted Kohn–Sham frontier orbital energies by Hartree–Fock, local density approximation, and generalized gradient approximation methods. The results clearly highlight the significance of capturing the orbital relaxation effects. Moreover, the proposed scaling correction approach provides a useful way of computing derivative gaps and Fukui quantities of N-electron finite systems (N is an integer), without the need to perform self-consistent-field calculations for (N ± 1)-electron systems.

This paper aims to design an “individually controlled system” (ICS) for children in class-rooms based on their preferences and needs. It is well known that a higher satisfaction of in-door environmental quality (IEQ), including thermal, air, visual and acoustical quality, can be achieved by giving occupants control over their local environment. However, knowledge about individual control of IEQ in classrooms by children is still limited. Based on a field sur-vey conducted in in 21 primary schools (54 classrooms with children aging from 9 to 12) in The Netherlands and a lab study performed in the SenseLab (a semi-lab environment at the premises of the TU Delft) of circa 350 children of some of the schools studied, in which pref-erences and needs of pupils, as well as perception about control of their individual IEQ, were collected, the first prototype of an ICS to improve their local environmental quality will be designed.