Moving to a green building: Indoor environment quality, thermal comfort and health

2021 ◽  
pp. 107592
Author(s):  
Rana Elnaklah ◽  
Ian Walker ◽  
Sukumar Natarajan
2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracie J Reed ◽  
Peggi L Clouston ◽  
Simi Hoque ◽  
Paul R Fisette

This study examines the differences between two environmental assessment methods for the K-12 education sector: the United States Green Building Council's (USGBC) LEED Schools Version 3.0 and the British Research Establishment's (BRE) BREEAM Education issue 2.0. Credit requirements are compared side-by-side and against recommendations from researchers in areas such as acoustics, lighting and indoor environment quality. Strengths in the two schemes and areas for improvement are highlighted, with acknowledgement that each scheme offers components and techniques from which the other could benefit.


Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 659
Author(s):  
Magdalena Grzegorzewska ◽  
Paweł Kirschke

The green building certification system has long-lasting benefits by improving building efficiency and sustainability. The ultimate goal of such classification is to promote the preservation of the global environment as well as the occupants’ well-being and their health. In this paper, we present examples of buildings that have been designed and built in Poland and have been certified with BREEAM, LEED and WELL. Our study investigates human factors in certification systems and examines the WELL Building Standard as a supplement to other green systems, which will probably be the most popular in the future. The green building movement should prioritize pro-human factors and the associated environmental beliefs to improve indoor environment quality for users’ needs. We present this matter on the example of the Polish office space market, providing statistics and analyzing the architecture of six certified office buildings from Warsaw, Poznań and Wrocław. They are a representative sample of buildings designed following the certification regime. It was demonstrated how this aids in improving work comfort, enhances the program of office spaces and the organization of service spaces within buildings, which increases the rank of this architecture and positively affects the urban environment.


2012 ◽  
Vol 433-440 ◽  
pp. 5821-5827
Author(s):  
Hafsa Al Omari ◽  
E. Luma Al Dabbagh

The green building or green architecture has come to light as a strong architectural movement at the end of 1990's and as a main trend in architectural practice. The architectural green is a modern architectural philosophy which deals with the competent relationship between the functional constructive systems and its vital environmental, by controlling the inputs and outputs of this system with the least negative effects on the environment and occupant's health, and the least energy consumption during the various stages of the building ( construction, operation, maintenance and destruction ) to achieve the functional activities and the inventive and efficient architectural structures. The importance of this movement lies in trying to achieve the sustainable development in its environmental, social and economic aspects because of the problems that developed and developing countries ( e.g. Iraq ) face such as energy consumption and pollution. Several international standards of different classifications, depending on local context of each country, has been appeared. Some of these tools are (BREEAM, LEED, CO-CHPS Colorado, GBTool, CASBEE) which aim to assess the performance of the building from green Architecture's perspective. Although there is a similarity in the classification levels including the sustainable location, how to use (water, energy and atmosphere, materials, resources) effectively, indoor environment quality and the design's innovation, they differ in other aspects that its importance relies on the environmental and local context. The problem of our research was the absence of the practical evaluation tool of the green building ( school buildings ) for the Iraq's local context in general and Mosul in particular, compatibly with the city climate. The research aims at making theoretical construction to identify the assessment indicators of the school buildings from green architecture's perspective, in order to create suitable and general assessment tool for schools building in Mosul city which can help improving the performance of these schools, decreasing the effect on the health, sparing energy coasts, and other benefits in the stages of the project ( pre-construction, construction, post-construction ). The research supposes that the multi-dimensional designing strategy is an active tool used in establishing the tool classification of assessment. For reaching goals, the research adopts the theoretical method and questionnaire. Finally, the research provides an assessment tool for school building in Mosul from the green architecture's perspective (AGBS) Green Building Assessment Tool for school ) in conformity with the local context of the city for enabling the designer to follow it in order to achieve the investment within his school architectural products. Results indicate six categories for assessment tool. First Sustainable Sites category (SS) which have the greatest weight 25.7%, , then Indoor Environment Quality(IEQ) 24.35667%. then Materials & Resources (M&R), Energy & Atomosphere (A&E), Water Efficiency(WE),and Innovotion in design (ID), have 17.32% ، 10.5% ، 3.987181% , Respectively.


2011 ◽  
Vol 90-93 ◽  
pp. 3043-3046 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xue Bin Yang ◽  
Zhi Pan Gu ◽  
Ji Chun Yang ◽  
Guang Ping Lin

This study reviews some published literatures to survey the recent research on indoor environment quality and building energy consumption. The indoor environment quality is categorized and defined as different indices and variables. The building energy consumption can be determined by ventilation rates, thermal comfort, adaptive thermal comfort, neutral temperature, set-point temperature, indoor air quality, air velocity, and non-occupied hours. Various climates or regions such as subtropical climates in Hong Kong, Italy, three climatic zones in Greece, hot and dry climates in Africa, hot and humid climate in Thailand, are contained. The building types include office buildings, commercial buildings and school buildings, and the data can be obtained from a simulation model or the field database. It can be concluded that the indoor environment quality has a significant influence on the building energy consumption, and a validated thermal model is be a practical tool to investigate the effect of the indoor environmental parameters.


Buildings ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhonghua Gou

The Special Issue on “Human Factors in Green Building” addresses the design of indoor environment quality for users’ needs. The collected papers cover various building types and the research highlights the different needs of users. In working environments, employees’ stress is the main concern in the workplace design, especially for open plan offices where lack of privacy and over exposure to environmental stress have been reported. In residential environments, residents have great opportunities to adjust their environments to suit their needs; therefore, passive design such as natural ventilation is explored in residential buildings with climates such as cold or humid tropical. In healthcare environments, the papers in this issue are concerned with the needs of patients, especially the older adults who require special care. In learning environments, thermal and visual aspects are investigated for optimal comfort conditions and learning outcomes. The special issue demonstrates insightful critical thinking of indoor environment quality and proposes a new understanding for more practical design solutions. This editorial note is a brief review of the 12 papers, concluding with reflections about design of built environments to meet users’ needs.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-162
Author(s):  
G. L. Szabó ◽  
F. Kalmár

Energy saving in buildings is one of the most important research directions in the building sector. Energy saving solutions should not lead to decreased indoor environment quality. Because of the increased number of summer heat waves, cooling systems are widely used to assure thermal comfort in buildings. In this paper, ceiling cooling and wall cooling systems were tested and compared from the thermal comfort point of view using 24 subjects (12 women and 12 men). The cooling ceiling and wall surface and the supply/return temperatures were similar. Analysing the obtained subjective answers, no significant differences were obtained on average or by gender. However, significant differences were obtained between the subjective answers and the calculated PMV values. Furthermore, the occupant’s reaction was different after switching off the ventilation and cooling systems.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1973
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Majewski ◽  
Łukasz J. Orman ◽  
Marek Telejko ◽  
Norbert Radek ◽  
Jacek Pietraszek ◽  
...  

The paper analyses the indoor environment in two modern intelligent buildings located in Poland. Measurements of air and globe temperatures, relative humidity and carbon dioxide concentration in 117 rooms carried out in the space of 1.5 years were presented. Thermal comfort of the occupants has been investigated using a questionnaire survey. Based on 1369 questionnaires, thermal sensation, acceptability and preference votes were analysed in view of their interdependency as well as their dependency on operative temperature, which proved to be very strong. It has been found that the respondents did not completely rate thermal comfort and indoor environment quality as very high, although the overwhelming sensations were positive. Apart from the operation of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, this might have also been the cause of individual human factors, such as body mass index, as tested in the study, or the finding that people were generally in favour of a warmer environment. Moreover, thermal environment proved to be the most important element for ensuring the well-being of the occupants.


2011 ◽  
Vol 71-78 ◽  
pp. 3520-3523
Author(s):  
Xue Bin Yang ◽  
De Fa Sun ◽  
Xiang Jiang Zhou ◽  
Ji Chun Yang

This study reviews some published literatures on the benchmarking and ranking guidelines, tools and comparison of buildings. Energy performance, Indoor air quality and thermal comfort can be covered for the rating tools for buildings. Further, the energy performance can also be calculated by the other parameters related to the room thermal properties. A rating system to benchmark buildings can employ several parameters including indoor environment quality, clothing volume, predicted mean vote, operative temperature, and thermal energy consumption. It can be concluded that the indoor air quality or thermal comfort can be used to evaluate buildings due to their influence on the occupant satisfaction and job performance. Also, building benchmarking or rating will be various because Different comfort criteria may lead to different comfort temperature.


Facilities ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (7/8) ◽  
pp. 411-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Zalejska-Jonsson

Purpose – The aims of this paper is to investigate the overall satisfaction of occupants of green and conventional residential buildings and their perception of indoor environment quality (IEQ) and to study factors that may cause occupants’ dissatisfaction. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected through a survey sent to occupants of comparable green and conventional multi-family buildings. The difference in responses between occupants of green and conventional buildings was analysed using Mann–Whitney (rank sum) test. The ordered logistic models were applied to the data to test whether the overall satisfaction changes depending on the level of acceptance of indoor environment quality and whether the building environmental profile and the apartment tenure affect occupant satisfaction. Findings – The results show that both categories of occupants are very satisfied with their apartments and that there is no statistically significant difference between the stated overall satisfaction of occupants living in green and conventional buildings, although a difference was found in the acceptance level for thermal and sound quality. The research highlights the importance of occupant feedback, user-friendly technical installations and the ability to control indoor environment. This knowledge is important for designers, engineers and developers alike in enabling them to improve dwelling quality and minimize post-occupancy problems. Research limitations/implications – It was not possible to include physical measurements of IEQ parameters; the analysis is based only on occupants’ responses, which may carry a certain subjectivity. Originality/value – The paper contributes to the understanding of IEQ from occupant perspective and to knowledge on green building performance.


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