Indoor environmental quality (IEQ)

On average, a higher educational student spends 3-8 years inside an institutional building during their studies, where they tend to stay with large groups of students in confined environments for longer durations. Improper design standards and occupant control in lecture halls can result in poor Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ), which can lead to health issues such as Sick Building Syndrome (SBS).

In school and office buildings, the ventilation system has a large contribution to the total energy use. A control strategy that adjusts the operation to the actual demand can significantly reduce the energy use while guaranteeing a good indoor environmental quality (IEQ). This is important in rooms with a highly fluctuating occupancy profile, such as classrooms and open offices. A standard rule-based control (RBC) strategy is reactive, making the installation 'lag behind' in relation to the demand.

The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) is in Boulder, Colorado USA at 5280 feet above sea level. The campus has approximately 12 million square feet of infrastructure spanning over 100 years of building infrastructure evolution. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the University employed a science-based approach with campus researchers including aerosol scientists and campus epidemiologist and industry standards to inform a layered risk management strategy for an on-campus learning experience during the pandemic.

A major challenge in the built environment is the integration of energy and indoor environmental quality in the optimization of existing buildings. The UK’s target of net-zero energy buildings by 2050 brings in the need to optimize existing buildings for energy efficiency and to provide better indoor environmental quality (IEQ). The complications are the monitoring of the indoor environment for better indoor air quality (IAQ) and thermal comfort without compromising the energy efficiency of the building.

Investigation of Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) in various types of buildings is a rather intense research activity by recent years. IEQ refers to the acceptable levels of thermal, visual and acoustic comfort in addition to Indoor Air Quality (IAQ). In the proposed work, a systematic measurement campaign in university classrooms in the Educational School of the University of Western Macedonia, Florina, Greece, is presented; the campaign was performed by the end of the spring semester, in free-running classrooms.

Limited data are available for understanding indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and the related healtheffects in schools in China.