- Support human/environment centered building engineering
- Support a systems-based approach to building environmental design
- Improve knowledge on methods & techniques to reliably predict: room air flows and multi-zone air flows, ventilation/climate system performance and systems interactions, under uncertainty
- Account for systems dynamics occupancy presence & interactions, and weather
- Support Integration of novel building climate systems & controls
- Support sustainable building environmental design
Significance:
“During the last few years, due to the improvement of living standards, & the solutions provided by technological progress, the expectation for high indoor environmental quality has gradually increased. Because people spend about 90% of the time indoors, the need to maintain healthy and comfortable indoor conditions and at the same time, to improve energy efficiency is a crucial subject”
[Indoor Climate Quality Assessment, REHVA Guidebook No 14, 2011]
A Statement on Air Quality:
We take the air we breathe for granted. Over the last few centuries and years the nature of outdoor and indoor air pollutants has been shifting rapidly from purely nature- origin organic pollutants (e.g. microbial) into a combination of microbial and man-made synthetic pollutants. Outdoor pollution from vehicles and factories is also of great concern for building occupants in large and rapidly growing cities. Interactions between pollutants and the effects on people are often unknown. The most affected by exposure to air pollutants are the vulnerable populations: babies, children, pregnant women, elder, and sick. Over the years, the principles of ventilation have not changed, but ventilation technologies have evolved. The challenge of building scientists/engineers is to develop methods and tools to help advance ventilation systems and technologies to achieve adequate ventilation, integrate well with other building systems, and does not waste energy.
A Statement on Thermal Comfort:
“… the proliferation of western lifestyles, clothing, technology in building construction & microclimate control have tended towards homogenizing indoor environments to which humans are exposed. The result is that humans are becoming adapted to a very narrow band of conditions. In a global ecosystem increasingly threatened by environmental degradation & anthropogenic climate change, such specialization in adaptation needs to be examined in terms of:
a) sustainability over the longer term, & b) the overall “biological fitness”, or adaptability of the human species.
Here, we need to be mindful of the broad principle that, within a changing environment, survivability is greater among the adaptable than the adapted & ask which trend is being favoured by technological development and thermal design?
Humans have a fairly broad adaptability, a capacity for acclimatization to different conditions, but we can become “spoiled”. Living in artificially maintained and homogenised environments would reduce this adaptability, the limits of survival would be narrowed.”
[Auliciems A and Szokolay SV (1997). Thermal Comfort, Design Tools & Techniques, Passive and Low Energy Architecture International]
From the statement above, the message for building scientists/engineers is not to sacrifice comfort, but to be rigorous and conscious in designing buildings to meet the actual thermal needs of occupants, while being mindful and raising awareness through professional practice about the consequences of “too much comfort” (i.e. minimum tolerance of thermal environmental fluctuations) on people and on the planet.
Over the past few years, a recent significant amount of research on residential thermal comfort has been motivated by the need to support thermally comfortable and energy efficient residential designs. Two main drivers are motivating this research: 1) the evidence of climate change that is expected to increase the overheating in risks at homes, and 2) the increase in wealth in emerging economies such those of as China, India, and Brazil, which is increasing the demand for air conditioning.
Can we apply a “drip irrigation” approach to building environmental design? Are personal (even wearable) environmental systems a viable alternative?