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We evaluated diurnal trends of size-resolved indoor and outdoor fluorescent biological airborne particles (FBAPs) and their contributions to particulate matter (PM) within 0.5-20 μm. After a ten-week continuous sampling via two identical wideband integrated bioaerosol sensors, we found that both indoor and outdoor diurnal trends of PM were driven by its bioaerosol component. Outdoors, the median [interquartile range] FBAP mass concentration peaked at 8.2 [5.8-9.9] μg/m3 around sunrise and showed a downtrend from 6:00 to 18:00 during the daytime and an uptrend during the night. The nighttime FBAP level was 1.8 [1.4-2.2] times higher than that during the daytime, and FBAPs accounted for 45 % and 56 % of PM during daytime and nighttime, respectively. Indoors, the rise in concentrations of FBAPs smaller than 1 μm coincided with the starting operation of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system at 6:00, and the concentration peaked at 8:00 and dropped to the daily average by noontime. This indicated that the starting operation of the HVAC system dislodged the overnight settled and accumulated fine bioaerosols into the indoor environment. For particles larger than 1 μm, the variation of mass concentration was driven by occupancy. Based on regression modeling, the contributions of indoor PM, non-FBAP, and FBAP sources to indoor mass concentrations were estimated to be 93 %, 67 %, and 97 % during the occupied period.

Assessment of integrated personal exposure (PE) to airborne particulate matter (PM) across diverse microenvironments (MEs) over 24 hours under different exposure scenarios is necessary to identify appropriate strategies to improve urban air quality and mitigate the health effects of PM. We carried out a collaborative study in a densely populated city-state (Singapore) to assess the integrated PE to fine particles (PM2.5), ultrafine particles (UFPs) and black carbon (BC) across diverse indoor and outdoor urban MEs, estimate related health risks and make suitable recommendations for healthy living in cities. Two volunteers with different lifestyles participated in the study by tracking their PE to particulate air pollution and the time-activity patterns over 24 hours using portable PM monitoring devices and recording their whereabouts using GPS coordinates. Home, transport and recreation (i.e., food court) MEs represented pollution hotspots of PM2.5 (21.0 μg/m3), BC (3.4 μg/m3) and UFP (33.0 × 103 #/cm3), respectively. Among the different modes of transport used by the participants (walking, cycling, e-scooter, mass rapid transport (MRT), bus, car and taxi), the air pollutants had elevated concentrations while commuting by public transport (bus and MRT) as well as during active modes of transport (walking and cycling). Air-conditioned cars and taxis, equipped with air filtration systems, represented the lowest PE. The health risk assessment revealed that there are potential carcinogenic risks associated with the long-term exposure to elevated levels of PM2.5-bound toxic trace elements. These risks can be mitigated with the introduction of low-carbon and active modes of transport in place of internal combustion engines and the use of indoor air pollution exposure mitigation devices.

In a business as usual scenario, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration (CO2) could reach 950 parts per million (ppm) by 2100. Indoor CO2 concentrations will rise consequently, given its dependence on atmospheric CO2 levels. If buildings are ventilated following current standards in 2100, indoor CO2 concentration could be over 1300 ppm, depending on specific ventilation codes. Such exposure to CO2 could have physiological and psychological effects on building occupants. We conducted a randomized, within-subject study, examining the physiological effects on the respiratory functions of 15 persons. We examined three exposures, each 150 min long, with CO2 of: 900 ppm (reference), 1450 ppm (decreased ventilation), and 1450 ppm (reference condition with added pure CO2). We measured respiratory parameters with capnometry and forced vital capacity (FVC) tests. End-tidal CO2 and respiration rates did not significantly differ across the three exposures. Parameters measured using FVC decreased significantly from the start to the end of exposure only at the reduced ventilation condition (p

Building ventilation systems must get much better

Thermal comfort assessment for the built environment has become more available to analysts and researchers due to the proliferation of sensors and subjective feedback methods. These data can be used for modeling comfort behavior to support design and operations towards energy efficiency and well-being. By nature, occupant subjective feedback is imbalanced as indoor conditions are designed for comfort, and responses indicating otherwise are less common. This situation creates a scenario for the machine learning workflow where class balancing as a pre-processing step might be valuable for developing predictive thermal comfort classification models with high-performance. This paper investigates the various thermal comfort dataset class balancing techniques from the literature and proposes a modified conditional Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), comfortGAN, to address this imbalance scenario. These approaches are applied to three publicly available datasets, ranging from 30 and 67 participants to a global collection of thermal comfort datasets, with 1,474; 2,067; and 66,397 data points, respectively. This work finds that a classification model trained on a balanced dataset, comprised of real and generated samples from comfortGAN, has higher performance (increase between 4% and 17% in classification accuracy) than other augmentation methods tested. However, when classes representing discomfort are merged and reduced to three, better imbalanced performance is expected, and the additional increase in performance by comfortGAN shrinks to 1 - 2%. These results illustrate that class balancing for thermal comfort modeling is beneficial using advanced techniques such as GANs, but its value is diminished in certain scenarios. A discussion is provided to assist potential users in determining which scenarios this process is useful and which method works best.

Understanding occupants’ satisfaction with their environment is an important step to improve indoor environmental quality (IEQ). These satisfaction data are limited to Singaporean commercial buildings. We surveyed (N = 666) occupant satisfaction with 18 IEQ parameters in seven Green Mark certified air-conditioned commercial buildings in Singapore. About 78 % of the participants expressed satisfaction with their overall workspace environment. Occupants were most satisfied with flexibility of dress code (86 % satisfaction), electrical lighting (84 %) and cleanliness (82 %), and most dissatisfied with sound privacy (42 % dissatisfaction), personal control (32 %) and temperature (30 %). We found that satisfaction with cleanliness has the highest impact to overall workspace environment satisfaction. Our results suggest achieving high occupant satisfaction for some IEQ factors is harder than others, which suggests the premise of singular satisfaction rating (e.g., 80 %) that applies to all IEQ parameters may not be reliable and representative. We determined that the major contributors to thermal dissatisfaction were insufficient air movement and overcooled workspaces. Occupants in open plan office were unhappy with the noise produced by their nearby colleagues. We also found that several IEQ variables (odors, air movement, available space, overall privacy, sound privacy and temperature) which are not statistically significant to the overall workspace satisfaction on their own, but their impacts becomes substantial when these IEQ variables are merged into larger environmental factors (i.e., Perceived Air Quality, Acoustics, Layout and Thermal). These results can support the development of an IEQ benchmarks for commercial buildings in Singapore.

During the rapid rise in COVID-19 illnesses and deaths globally, and notwithstanding recommended precautions, questions are voiced about routes of transmission for this pandemic disease. Inhaling small airborne droplets is probable as a third route of infection, in addition to more widely recognized transmission via larger respiratory droplets and direct contact with infected people or contaminated surfaces. While uncertainties remain regarding the relative contributions of the different transmission pathways, we argue that existing evidence is sufficiently strong to warrant engineering controls targeting airborne transmission as part of an overall strategy to limit infection risk indoors. Appropriate building engineering controls include sufficient and effective ventilation, possibly enhanced by particle filtration and air disinfection, avoiding air recirculation and avoiding overcrowding. Often, such measures can be easily implemented and without much cost, but if only they are recognised as significant in contributing to infection control goals. We believe that the use of engineering controls in public buildings, including hospitals, shops, offices, schools, kindergartens, libraries, restaurants, cruise ships, elevators, conference rooms or public transport, in parallel with effective application of other controls (including isolation and quarantine, social distancing and hand hygiene), would be an additional important measure globally to reduce the likelihood of transmission and thereby protect healthcare workers, patients and the general public.

This study evaluated the interrelations between indoor and outdoor bioaerosols in a bedroom under a living condition. Two wideband integrated bioaerosol sensors were utilized to measure indoor and outdoor particulate matter (PM) and fluorescent biological airborne particles (FBAPs), which were within a size range of 0.5-20 μm. Throughout this one-month case study, the median proportion of FBAPs in PM by number was 19% (5%; the interquartile range, hereafter) and 17% (3%) for indoors and outdoors, respectively, and those by mass were 78% (12%) and 55% (9%). According to the size-resolved data, FBAPs dominated above 2 and 3.5 μm indoors and outdoors, respectively. Comparing indoor upon outdoor ratios among occupancy and window conditions, the indoor FBAPs larger than 3.16 μm was dominated by indoor sources, while non-FBAPs were mainly from outdoors. The occupant dominated the indoor source of both FBAPs and non-FBAPs. Under awake and asleep, count- and mass-based mean emission rates were 45.9 and 18.7 × 106 #/h and 5.02 and 2.83 mg/h, respectively. Based on indoor activities and local outdoor air quality in Singapore, this study recommended opening the window when awake and closing it during sleep to lower indoor bioaerosol exposure.

Recognizing the value of open-source research databases in advancing the art and science of HVAC, in 2014 the ASHRAE Global Thermal Comfort Database II project was launched under the leadership of University of California at Berkeley’s Center for the Built Environment and The University of Sydney’s Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) Laboratory. The exercise began with a systematic collection and harmonization of raw data from the last two decades of thermal comfort field studies around the world. The ASHRAE Global Thermal Comfort Database II (Comfort Database), now an online, open-source database, includes approximately 81,846 complete sets of objective indoor climatic observations with accompanying “right-here-right-now” subjective evaluations by the building occupants who were exposed to them. The database is intended to support diverse inquiries about thermal comfort in field settings. A simple web-based interface to the database enables filtering on multiple criteria, including building typology, occupancy type, subjects’ demographic variables, subjective thermal comfort states, indoor thermal environmental criteria, calculated comfort indices, environmental control criteria and outdoor meteorological information. Furthermore, a web-based interactive thermal comfort visualization tool has been developed that allows end-users to quickly and interactively explore the data.

Air conditioning and mechanical ventilation systems may be oversized in commercial buildings in the Tropics. Oversized cooling coils may lead to reduced dehumidifying performance, indoor air quality and thermal comfort and increased energy consumption. In this paper, an adaptable cooling coil design is assessed with a general-purpose coil selection software tool, in which the number of active rows changes as a function of the load. For a 100% oversized coil, it is shown that the adaptable cooling coil is able to provide small but relevant improved humidity control down to 25% of the design load. This was obtained without affecting energy performance in typical variable air volume design and control. For specific applications, where variable air volume systems mainly control space humidity, there are also energy savings. The adaptable cooling coil could be seen as providing additional flexibility in the operation of HVAC systems, particularly in the tropics.

SARS-CoV-2 has been recognized to be airborne transmissible. With the increased transmissibility leading to increasingly reported positive cases, home quarantine is adopted for the infected patients who are not seriously ill. However, the risk of household aerosol transmission is not well studied. We conducted tracer gas experiment to simulate the exhaled virus laden aerosols from a patient under home quarantine situation inside a residential testbed. The Sulphur hexafluoride concentration (SF6,conc) was measured both inside and outside the quarantine room under various scenarios including, (i) air-conditioning (AC) vs natural ventilation (NV), (ii) operation of ceiling fan, and (iii) operation of window exhaust fan. The ratio of outside-to-inside SF6,conc (O/ISF6) was an indicator for potential exposure of occupants in the same household. Our findings showed, without an exhaust fan, the in-room SF6,conc in AC settings was 4 times higher than in the NV scenarios. Meanwhile, we found the exhaust fan was effective in reducing the O/ISF6 in the AC scenarios (with or without ceiling fan), but its function was diminished in the NV setting with ceiling fan. We suspected the effectiveness of exhaust fan was reduced by air infiltration from other window openings in NV situation. Meanwhile, the operation of ceiling fan continuously pushing tracer gas outwards from the quarantine room through the door gap. Our results suggested that natural ventilation with windows open or switching on a window exhaust fan could reduce aerosol transmission risk from the quarantine room. This study provides useful evidence in recommending low risk ventilation strategies for home quarantine situations.

In warm environments, isothermal cooling by deliberately enhanced air movement can maintain thermal comfort using less energy than compressor-based air conditioning. To evaluate the performance of a brushless direct current (DC) stand fan, the cooling fan efficiency (CFE) index was measured in a climatic chamber under four dry-bulb temperatures (24, 26, 28, and 30 °C), six speed In warm environments, isothermal cooling by deliberately enhanced air movement can maintain thermal comfort using less energy than compressor-based air conditioning. To evaluate the performance of a brushless direct current (DC) stand fan, the cooling fan efficiency (CFE) index was measured in a climatic chamber under four dry-bulb temperatures (24, 26, 28, and 30 °C), six speed settings (corresponding to centreline speeds in the range 0.6-2.5 m/s at 1 m distance), two fan-manikin distances (1 and 2 m) and two orientations (front, side). The CFE index is defined as the ratio of the whole-body cooling effect generated by non-uniform airflow from the fan to its power consumption (°C/W). The CFE index overcomes the limitations of assessing the cooling effect based just on a few air speed measurements. The results show that the CFE index is influenced by dry-bulb temperature, fan speed setting, and fan-manikin distance, but not by fan-manikin orientation. The lower the temperature and the closer the fan, the higher is the CFE index. Increasing fan speed setting simultaneously enhances whole-body cooling and increases power use. Consequently, the CFE has a non-monotonic relationship with fan speed setting and the peak value is reached for an intermediate speed. As compared with previous testing results using an alternating current stand fan, the CFE index of the DC fan we tested is three times higher. As a complement to air-conditioning, the tested stand fan is a suitable energy-efficient technology for providing thermal comfort in warm environments.

In warm environments, isothermal cooling by deliberately enhanced air movement can maintain thermal comfort using less energy than compressor-based air conditioning. To evaluate the performance of a brushless direct current (DC) stand fan, the cooling fan efficiency (CFE) index was measured in a climatic chamber under four dry-bulb temperatures (24, 26, 28, and 30 °C), six speed settings (corresponding to centreline speeds in the range 0.6-2.5 m/s at 1 m distance), two fan-manikin distances (1 and 2 m) and two orientations (front, side). The CFE index is defined as the ratio of the whole-body cooling effect generated by non-uniform airflow from the fan to its power consumption (°C/W). The CFE index overcomes the limitations of assessing the cooling effect based just on a few air speed measurements. The results show that the CFE index is influenced by dry-bulb temperature, fan speed setting, and fan-manikin distance, but not by fan-manikin orientation. The lower the temperature and the closer the fan, the higher is the CFE index. Increasing fan speed setting simultaneously enhances whole-body cooling and increases power use. Consequently, the CFE has a non-monotonic relationship with fan speed setting and the peak value is reached for an intermediate speed. As compared with previous testing results using an alternating current stand fan, the CFE index of the DC fan we tested is three times higher. As a complement to air-conditioning, the tested stand fan is a suitable energy-efficient technology for providing thermal comfort in warm environments.