building

This study aims at demonstrating that semi-quantitative dampness/mold exposure indices can predict existence of excessive building-respiratory symptoms and diseases. Those findings justify action to correct water leaks and repair water damage in ordre to prevent them.

SUBURET stands for Sustainable Building Retrofit. The basic idea behind the sustainability concept is that normal renovation work fails to meet future needs and, far from exploiting the available potential, prevents any real modernization of the building stock. The name SUBURET designates both the workshop itself and all the R&D initiatives proposed.
The SUBURET programme aims to promote advanced retrofit concepts and technologies specifically focused on housing and office buildings and based on the following principles:

The aim of that study is to establish characteristic building parameters and to analyse the night ventilation effect with these parameters. Measurements were made thanks to a parametric model and a building simulation programme.

The author advises a commitment to a philosophy of proactive preventive maintenance for home, apartment, school and commercial buildings. Preventive actions would result in considerable cost savings, and save building occupants from major health problems.

A framework and computer code has been developed in that study for coupling building energy and load calculations with room air models.

This paper describes how the pollution loads in non-industrial buildings can be quantified by using the olf unit. It also sums up the existing data on the measured sensory pollution loads. Their use seems the most suitable approach for the prediction of ventilation rates required for an acceptable indoor air quality.

Three software tools CODYBA (version 6.3), XCUBE and CODYMUR are presented in this paper : - CODYBA for the study of the thermal behaviour of a multizone building with an example of simulation of a building in Seville - XCube for the study of 3D thermal bridges coefficients of the building with examples of application- CODYMUR, for the survey of the thermal behaviour of a partition; that tool makes the inertia phenomenom quickly understood.

The European Community SAVE directive 76/93 makes mandatory for member states to implement an action called Energy Labelling of buildings. The work has been divided in two phases, the first one deals with Officially protected buildings and the second one called CALENER that includes all kinds of buildings.
This Energy Labelling should consist of a description of the energy characteristics and some information about energy efficiency. Its aim is to reduce CO2 emission by means of a parallel reduction in energy consumption.

Climate change is a long term battle that involves the whole international community. The need for better energy efficiency is obvious. The energy efficiency of the existing building stock must be improved. Thanks to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) a lot of possibilities for the development of new type applications and services are present. Internet will be the main platform for the development.

The stake of sustainable development is to ensure today's and future developments of awealthy and healthy society in a high quality environment. This is also valid for sustainablebuildings that should take account of environmental, economical and social stakes. Thisincludes, among others, low energy use, good indoor environment quality (IEQ) and health.One of the aims of the European HOPE project is to evaluate buildings from these points ofview.