Airbase publication

The use of the word “resilience” has increased significantly since 2010, however, there is a lack of understanding around 1) how thermal resilience is defined (where some definitions were offered only recently) and 2) what distinguishes it from typical overheating assessments. In addition to this, there is a lack of uptake in the remote monitoring industry (which uses low-cost solutions) when it comes to typical parameters used in thermal comfort studies and there is need to demonstrate how resilience performance can be reported going forward.

Urban settings change the microclimate around buildings and resulting thermal comfort inside.  This paper presents a method to consider microclimatic conditions, especially the effect of wind variations around the building, which impacts natural ventilation rates and indoor operative temperatures.

Current HVAC control systems assume occupant-related information, i.e., preferences, occupancy and behaviour. Furthermore, occupants often have limited control over the indoor environment in non-residential buildings. As a result, occupants are often dissatisfied with the indoor environmental quality (IEQ). This study works towards defining a novel occupant-centric control (OCC) framework which integrates occupants’ feedback regarding their satisfaction with the IEQ. This study collected both occupant satisfaction assessments via surveys and IEQ measurement data in various case studies.

In the frame of the project Flux50 smart ventilation, researchers and industrials aim at qualifying ventilation in mid-sized buildings through multidisciplinary consideration of sleep quality, user satisfaction, acoustic comfort, installation, maintenance, resilience and indoor air quality. As those factors may impact at different levels it is important to select a common metric for evaluation. Assessment of financial costs induced by the various categories will be used in that purpose.

A smart ventilation system is able to continually adjust itself to provide the desired indoor air quality (IAQ) while minimizing energy use, utility bills, thermal discomfort and noise. A smart ventilation system is also responsive to e.g. occupancy, outdoor conditions, direct sensing of contaminants and can provide information about e.g. IAQ, energy use and the need for maintenance or repair. Technically, all components for such systems are available in the market.  

The serious social and health crisis faced as a result of the spread of SARS-Cov 2 has highlighted the weaknesses of human beings but has mainly highlighted the inadequate static response of existing buildings; all those confined spaces characterised by the simultaneous presence of a large number of people, such as classrooms, have shown, over the past two years, how unhealthy are because of the high possibility of contraction of the virus inside them.

Airborne transmission has been widely proven to be the main means of contagion of SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2) , as multiple studies have established (Greenhalgh et al., 2021; Miller et al., 2021; Lidia Morawska & Cao, 2020; Tang et al., 2021; World Health Organization, 2021), Furthermore, the main documented COVID-19 outbreaks have occurred indoors (Qian et al., 2021; Randall et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2022), with medium and long-range transmission —beyond 1.5 m— as a especially relevant transmission way in poorly bad ventilated spaces (Li, 2021; Z.

This paper touches on historic indicators of good hospital design such as sun, daylight and natural ventilation. Evidence is provided that recent trends in hospital design that lean towards more highly serviced buildings with fixed windows lead to higher levels of Sick Building Syndrome, nosocomial infections and SARS CoV-2 related infections and deaths than in naturally ventilated buildings with opening windows.

EN 16798-7:2017 considers that windows on roofs that have a pitch below 60° are not included on the windward side whatever their orientation. It means that roof windows are accounted for, but only on the leeward side when using the existing standard for calculation of air flows, EN 16798-7.

Therefore, in the specific case of a room only equipped with roof windows (e.g. an attic) and aeraulically independent from the rest of the building, whatever the orientation of the roof windows, only the simplified “singlesided” calculation method of EN 16798-7:2017 is applicable.

In Austria the lack of guidelines or standards has caused many discussions and disputes on the question if “sufficient ventilation” can be ensured with window airing only, in particular in newly constructed, airtight residential buildings. This work presents the development of a calculation method aiming to provide a simple-to use tool to estimate the risk of mould growth and the window airing interval required to ensure good indoor air quality assuming a range of different boundary conditions and occupant behaviours.