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There is an analysis of the citizenship behaviour of workers who take part in voluntary work projects promoted by their company as part of its corporate social responsibility. There is an evaluation of whether this participation develops attitudes in the workers involved which are different from those of workers who do not participate in this kind of projects. The research was conducted in a Mexican food business that pursues CSR projects in the contexts of community, environment and quality of life at work; it found that those who took part in the voluntary work show signs of civic awareness the benefit the organization as a whole and further, help to achieve the specific objectives of their project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple factors like: high existing competition on the market, strict economic conditions, budgetary restrictions, requirements of governmental entities for a major efficiency in the assignment of the resources, needs for national and international accreditations, the emergence of rankings for universities, etc., contribute to the adoption of total quality management and high performance by educational institutions, which are often slow to make significant changes. Essentially, this management philosophy aims to customer orientation, continuous improvement, active participation of the personnel, systemic alignment of the processes and obtaining of high performance results. Under this perspective, many institutions in the education sector have adopted the Total Quality Management and Excellence in Performance and, concretely the Baldrige criterion as a highly useful and prestigious management model. The purpose of this research is, on one hand, identifying and understanding the relationship between the processes and the results of the organizational performance; and on the other, to determine the efficacy of the Baldrige criterion application as a management model for a university educational organization, this criterion allows obtaining excellence in performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of building characteristics indicates that there are some uncertainties influencing its energy performance: Environment, volumetry or operating conditions. It is important to have a low-cost system that performs this analysis and energy management by optimizing the coupling between production and consumption. Knowing the relationship between the annual thermal needs with different construction parameters can help to define this system and allow understanding the expected heating and cooling consumption based on easily available information. In this work, a numerical methodology has been applied to estimate the thermal loads of a building without internal gains. For this purpose, a simulation environment has been developed to execute a sensitivity analysis through the interconnection between TRNSYS 16.1 and GenOpt programs. Volumetry, building materials according to Spanish regulations and percentage of external windows are evaluated as analysis variables of the parametric study. Heating, and cooling loads have been calculated to quantify their influence: Older regulations imply higher annual loads; the increase in building height and area reduces the annual thermal loads and higher percentages of glazing on the external façades imply higher annual demands, particularly in the east and west orientations; the variation of the envelope results in the most influential factor. Finally, a statistical study has been performed to assess the annual trends: Heating trends point to more stability with two defined intervals, while cooling trends are more asymmetric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building occupancy is one of the relevant variables to understand the energy performance of buildings and to reduce the current gap between simulation-based and actual energy performance. In this study, the occupancy of a classroom in an educational center monitored over a full year was experimentally assessed. The classroom had different occupancy levels during the school year, with a theoretical minimum of eleven students, and no occupancy during vacations and weekends. Different variables such as indoor air temperature, relative humidity, CO2 concentration, overall electrical energy consumption of the educational center, electrical energy consumption of the building in which the monitored classroom is located, and heating energy consumption were recorded. We analyzed which of these variables were possible indicators of classroom occupancy, using the school timetable as a theoretical reference value for the validation of the results. Based on previous studies, one-hour moving averages are used to better identify the occupancy patterns by smoothing the fluctuations that are not a consequence of a change in the classroom occupancy. Histograms of each variable are used to identify the variable ranges associated within the occupancy: occupied or empty. The concentration of CO2 and electric measurements, identified in previous works as suitable to assess the occupancy patterns of rooms like offices with lower levels of occupancy, are recognized as potential occupancy indicators. It is therefore concluded that a higher level of space occupancy does not affect the result, and the same variables are identified as potential occupancy indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New technological, societal and legislative developments are necessary to support transitions to low-carbon energy systems. The building sector is responsible for almost 36% of the global final energy and 40% of CO2 emissions, so this sector has high potential to contribute to the expansion of positive energy districts. With this aim, a new digital Geographic Information System (GIS) platform has been developed to quantify the energy savings obtained through the implementation of refurbishment measures in residential buildings, including solar thermal collectors and geothermal technologies and assuming the postal district as the representative unit for the territory. Solar resources have been estimated from recently updated solar irradiation maps, whereas geothermal resources have been estimated from geological maps. Urbanistic data have been estimated from official cadastre databases. For representative buildings, the annual energy demand and savings are obtained and compared with reference buildings, both for heating and cooling. The GIS platform provides information on average results for each postal district, as well as estimates for buildings with particular parameters. The methodology has been applied to the Asturian region, an area of about 10,600 km2 on the Cantabrian coast of Spain, with complex orography and scattered population, qualified as a region in energy transition. High rehabilitation potentials have been achieved for buildings constructed before the implementation of the Spanish Technical Building Code of 2006, being higher for isolated houses than for collective buildings. Some examples of results are introduced in specific localities of different climatic zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New technological, societal and legislative developments are necessary to support transitions to low-carbon energy systems. The building sector is responsible for almost 36% of the global final energy and 40% of CO2 emissions, so this sector has high potential to contribute to the expansion of positive energy districts. With this aim, a new digital Geographic Information System (GIS) platform has been developed to quantify the energy savings obtained through the implementation of refurbishment measures in residential buildings, including solar thermal collectors and geothermal technologies and assuming the postal district as the representative unit for the territory. Solar resources have been estimated from recently updated solar irradiation maps, whereas geothermal resources have been estimated from geological maps. Urbanistic data have been estimated from official cadastre databases. For representative buildings, the annual energy demand and savings are obtained and compared with reference buildings, both for heating and cooling. The GIS platform provides information on average results for each postal district, as well as estimates for buildings with particular parameters. The methodology has been applied to the Asturian region, an area of about 10,600 km2 on the Cantabrian coast of Spain, with complex orography and scattered population, qualified as a region in energy transition. High rehabilitation potentials have been achieved for buildings constructed before the implementation of the Spanish Technical Building Code of 2006, being higher for isolated houses than for collective buildings. Some examples of results are introduced in specific localities of different climatic zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]