Use of smart monitoring and users’ feedback for to investigate the impact of the indoor environment on learning efficiency

Author(s):  
Lamine Lagsaiar ◽  
Isam Shahrour ◽  
Ammar Aljer ◽  
Aziz Soulhi
2020 ◽  
pp. 1420326X2097546
Author(s):  
Richard A Sharpe ◽  
Andrew J Williams ◽  
Ben Simpson ◽  
Gemma Finnegan ◽  
Tim Jones

Fuel poverty affects around 34% of European homes, representing a considerable burden to society and healthcare systems. This pilot study assesses the impact of an intervention to install a new first time central heating system in order to reduce fuel poverty on household satisfaction with indoor temperatures/environment, ability to pay bills and mental well-being. In Cornwall, 183 households received the intervention and a further 374 went onto a waiting list control. A post-intervention postal questionnaires and follow-up phone calls were undertaken ( n = 557) to collect data on household demographics, resident satisfaction with indoor environment, finances and mental well-being (using the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing scale). We compared responses between the waiting list control and intervention group to assess the effectiveness of the intervention. A total of 31% of participants responded, 83 from the waiting list control and 71 from the intervention group. The intervention group reported improvements in the indoor environment, finances and mental well-being. However, these benefits were not expressed by all participants, which may result from diverse resident behaviours, lifestyles and housing characteristics. Future policies need to consider whole house approaches alongside resident training and other behaviour change techniques that can account for complex interactions between behaviours and the built environment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 045-055
Author(s):  
Maria Saridi ◽  
Aikaterini Toska ◽  
Dimitra Latsou ◽  
Sofia Karakousi ◽  
Eleni Albani ◽  
...  

Aim: The aim of the study was to investigate the effect of physical activity and indoor environment on preschool children’s health. Subject and Methods: The final sample comprised 126 parents of children of preschool age. An anonymous questionnaire was used in order to investigate the impact of indoor air pollution on the children's health. Data analysis was performed by using descriptive statistics and cross-tabulations with the SPSS 22.0. Results: The majority of the parents were female (87.3%) at an average age of 31-40 years (73%). Regarding the children, there were an almost equal number of boys and girls and their age ranged between 3 and 6 years old. The children had not shown any signs of emotional or behavioural problems or other issues regarding regular physical functions and they hadn’t shown any problems regarding recreational activities and interaction with friends (90.5%). Cough is a frequent symptom in the case of a common cold (85.7%). There were no statistically significant differences in the parents' responses as far as their children's health dimensions, concerning the availability of an air conditioner at home, the existence of pets and smoking habits in the family environment. Conclusions: Improving air quality is an extremely complicated issue, since pollutants may be created both indoors and outdoors, which makes it very difficult to decrease them. Yet it still is definitely necessary, given the negative effects of pollution on human health, especially on the more vulnerable groups, such as children.


2020 ◽  
Vol 170 ◽  
pp. 01012
Author(s):  
Subbarao Yarramsetty ◽  
Nikhil Siva Deka ◽  
MVN Siva Kumar

The comfort level of occupants inside a building depends on various indoor environment factors like thermal comfort, indoor air quality, and indoor lighting quality. According to studies done on indoor environment quality of buildings, lighting plays a very critical role in determining the occupants comfort level. A proper indoor lighting is very important especially in the classrooms of an educational building as well as in student hostel rooms as it can be said as a vital element, controlling the psychology and comfort of the students and hence a deciding factor in the teaching-learning process. The lighting intensity and its distribution depends on the location of the interior partition as well as the design strategy of the exterior envelop. So, in order to obtain the most occupant friendly results, the impact of various strategies adopted should be evaluated in the early design period itself. This paper adopts a questionnaire-based field surveys which is done in the classrooms of National Institute of Technology Warangal and also in the hostel rooms of 1.8K Ultra Mega hostel of this institute. The main objective of this study includes. 1) To assess the indoor lighting comfort in the classrooms and hostel rooms of National Institute of Technology Warangal through a questionnaire-based lighting comfort study. 2) To identify preferences of subjects in the classroom environment with respect to lighting comfort and 3) To identify the comfort range of lighting intensity inside the classrooms and hostel rooms. SPSS software is used analyse the reliability of survey responses by finding the P value.


2020 ◽  
Vol 172 ◽  
pp. 09006
Author(s):  
Kamilla Heimar Andersen ◽  
Sverre B. Holøs ◽  
Aileen Yang ◽  
Kari Thunshelle ◽  
Øystein Fjellheim ◽  
...  

This study evaluates typical faults occurring in demand-controlled ventilation (DCV) system and the impact on three output results: energy use, thermal comfort, and indoor air quality. The methodologies used in this study were qualitative interviews of selected Norwegian Heating Ventilation Air Condition (HVAC) system experts and numerical modeling using the building performance simulation tool IDA ICE. The faults deduced from the qualitative interviews were modeled as the fault's different consequences to account for a large variety of faults. With a Norwegian school classroom as a case study, a local approach applying a one-at-a-time (OAT) simulation was used to perform an analysis of the extreme fault conditions that can occur. The results from the fault modeling demonstrated that greater attention is needed to avoid faults in the HVAC systems due to its impact on the indoor environment quality and energy efficiency of buildings.


2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (6) ◽  
pp. 1358-1376
Author(s):  
Wei Xu ◽  
Yanan Jiang ◽  
Xiaoli Zhang ◽  
Yi Li ◽  
Run Zhang ◽  
...  

Abstract Deep learning has made significant advances in methodologies and practical applications in recent years. However, there is a lack of understanding on how the long short-term memory (LSTM) networks perform in river flow prediction. This paper assesses the performance of LSTM networks to understand the impact of network structures and parameters on river flow predictions. Two river basins with different characteristics, i.e., Hun river and Upper Yangtze river basins, are used as case studies for the 10-day average flow predictions and the daily flow predictions, respectively. The use of the fully connected layer with the activation function before the LSTM cell layer can substantially reduce learning efficiency. On the contrary, non-linear transformation following the LSTM cells is required to improve learning efficiency due to the different magnitudes of precipitation and flow. The batch size and the number of LSTM cells are sensitive parameters and should be carefully tuned to achieve a balance between learning efficiency and stability. Compared with several hydrological models, the LSTM network achieves good performance in terms of three evaluation criteria, i.e., coefficient of determination, Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency and relative error, which demonstrates its powerful capacity in learning non-linear and complex processes in hydrological modelling.


Author(s):  
Tomoyasu Hirano ◽  
Tokuaki Shobayashi ◽  
Teiji Takei ◽  
Fumihiko Wakao

It is too early to provide a clear answer on the impact of exposure to the second-hand aerosol of heated tobacco products (HTPs) in the planning of policy for smoke-free indoors legislation. Here, we conducted a preliminary study to evaluate indoor air quality with the use of HTPs. We first measured the concentration of nicotine and particulate matter (PM2.5) in the air following 50 puffs in the use of HTPs or cigarettes in a small shower cubicle. We then measured these concentrations in comparison with the use equivalent of smoking 5.4 cigarettes per hour in a 25 m3 room, as a typical indoor environment test condition. In the shower cubicle test, nicotine concentrations in indoor air using three types of HTP, namely IQOS, glo, and ploomTECH, were 25.9–257 μg/m3. These values all exceed the upper bound of the range of tolerable concentration without health concerns, namely 3 µg/m3. In particular, the indoor PM2.5 concentration of about 300 to 500 μg/m3 using IQOS or glo in the shower cubicle is hazardous. In the 25 m3 room test, in contrast, nicotine concentrations in indoor air with the three types of HTP did not exceed 3 μg/m3. PM2.5 concentrations were below the standard value of 15 μg/m3 per year for IQOS and ploomTECH, but were slightly high for glo, with some measurements exceeding 100 μg/m3. These results do not negate the inclusion of HTPs within a regulatory framework for indoor tolerable use from exposure to HTP aerosol, unlike cigarette smoke.


2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yao Tao ◽  
Kiao Inthavong ◽  
Jiyuan Tu

The impact of human-induced wake flow and particle re-dispersion from floors in an indoor environment was investigated by performing computational fluid dynamics simulations with dynamic mesh of a moving manikin model in a confined room. The manikin motion was achieved by a dynamic layering mesh method to update new grids with each time step. Particle transport from the floors and its re-dispersion was tracked by a Lagrangian approach. A series of numerical simulations of three walking speeds were performed to compare the flow disturbance induced by the walking motion. The significant airflow patterns included: an upward-directed flow in front of the body combined with a high velocity downward-directed flow at the rear of the body; a stagnant region behind the gap between the legs and counter-rotating vortices in the wake region. The airflow momentum induced by the moving body disturbed PM2.5 particles that were initially at rest on the floor to lift and become re-suspended due to its interaction with the trailing wake. The residual flow disturbances after the manikin stopped moving continued to induce the particle to spread and deposit over time. The spatial and temporal characteristics of the particle dispersion and concentration showed that higher walking speed was conducive to reducing human's exposure to contaminants in breathing region.


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