Indoor environmental quality in school buildings, and the health and wellbeing of students

2014 ◽  
Vol 217 (7) ◽  
pp. 733-739 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mari Turunen ◽  
Oluyemi Toyinbo ◽  
Tuula Putus ◽  
Aino Nevalainen ◽  
Richard Shaughnessy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Quality ◽  
School Buildings ◽  
Indoor Environmental Quality ◽  
Health And Wellbeing

Healthy Workspaces: Strategies for Increasing the Indoor Environmental Quality at Call Centre Interiors for Employee Wellbeing and Productivity

BUILDER ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 284 (3) ◽  
pp. 60-63
Author(s):  
Salih Ceylan
Keyword(s):  
Interior Design ◽  
Environmental Quality ◽  
Call Center ◽  
Call Centre ◽  
Indoor Environmental Quality ◽  
Interior Space ◽  
Health And Wellbeing ◽  
Interior Spaces ◽  
Certification And Accreditation ◽  
Cultural Functions

Indoor environmental quality is a requirement for good architectural and interior design. The definition of indoor environmental quality refers to the conditions of the interior space that provide health and wellbeing for its occupants. Elements of indoor environmental quality are thermal comfort, indoor air quality, ventilation, ergonomics, natural and artificial lighting, odor, and acoustic quality. Indoor environmental quality is required in every type of interior space including ones with residential, educational, and cultural functions and workspaces. It is also included as one of the factors of energy efficient and sustainable design in building energy certification and accreditation systems. This study focuses on call center interiors as a type of workspaces, where the employees spend a long time in the interior space communicating with customers on the phone. The aim is to provide theoretical information and practical application suggestions for higher quality design in call center interiors. The methodology of this paper consists firstly of a literature review to study and analyze the definition and elements of indoor environmental quality, and its implementation into call center interiors as workspaces. Analytical studies lead to strategy proposals for better designed call center interior spaces. The results of the study indicate that better designed interior spaces in call centers lead to better health and wellbeing of the employees, resulting with higher performance and service quality.

Sociodemographic variations in the association between indoor environmental quality in school buildings and student performance

2021 ◽  
Vol 206 ◽  
pp. 108390
Author(s):  
Wande Benka-Coker ◽  
Bonnie Young ◽  
Shannon Oliver ◽  
Joshua W. Schaeffer ◽  
Dale Manning ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Student Performance ◽  
Environmental Quality ◽  
School Buildings ◽  
Indoor Environmental Quality

Short-term Measurements of Indoor Environmental Quality in Selected Offices – Case Study

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ludmila Meciarova ◽  
Silvia Vilcekova ◽  
Eva Kridlova Burdova ◽  
Ilija Zoran Apostoloski ◽  
Danica Kosicanova
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Quality ◽  
Indoor Air ◽  
Indoor Environmental Quality ◽  
Indoor Climate ◽  
Climate Conditions ◽  
Healthy Environment ◽  
Health And Wellbeing ◽  
The One

Decent quality of indoor air is important for health and wellbeing of building users. We live, work and study in indoors of various types of buildings. Often people are exposed to pollutants at higher concentrations than these that occur out-doors. Continual investigation of indoor air quality is needed for ensuring comfort and healthy environment. Measuring and analysis of occurrence of physical, chemical and biological factors is the first step for suggestion of optimization measures. Inside school buildings there are often inadequate indoor climate conditions such as thermal comfort parame-ters or ventilation. The aim of this study was determination of indoor environmental quality in selected offices in the building of elementary school in Slovakia. The values of operative temperature were not within the optimum range of values for the warm period of the year in one of the monitored offices. The intensity of illumination was lower in the two offices. Low levels of particulate matters were measured except the one office where permissible value was exceeded by 7.6%.

scholarly journals A Systematic Review on Indoor Environmental Quality in Naturally Ventilated School Classrooms: A Way Forward

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Nishant Raj Kapoor ◽  
Ashok Kumar ◽  
Chandan Swaroop Meena ◽  
Anuj Kumar ◽  
Tabish Alam ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Quality ◽  
Indoor Air ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Research Direction ◽  
Future Research ◽  
School Buildings ◽  
Indoor Environmental Quality ◽  
Future Research Direction ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Acoustic Comfort

This review presents the existing state-of-the-art practices of indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in naturally ventilated school buildings and is mainly focused on the components of IEQ like thermal comfort, indoor air quality with ventilation, and visual and acoustic comfort. This article also discusses the impacts of COVID-19 on naturally ventilated school buildings, highlighting the obviousness of dynamic applications that concentrate on reducing COVID-19 effects in naturally ventilated school buildings. The importance of the concerned issues and factors are discussed in detail for future research direction. This review is a step toward the development of the IEQ standard for naturally ventilated school buildings.

AN EVALUATION OF INDOOR ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY AND OCCUPANT WELL-BEING IN MANITOBA SCHOOL BUILDINGS

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed Radwan ◽  
Mohamed H. Issa
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Thermal Comfort ◽  
Indoor Air Quality ◽  
Environmental Quality ◽  
Indoor Air ◽  
Well Being ◽  
School Buildings ◽  
Indoor Environmental Quality ◽  
Middle Aged ◽  
Green School

This exploratory research aims to evaluate indoor environmental quality in the classrooms of three school buildings in Southern Manitoba, Canada, and to evaluate the well-being of these schools' teachers as it pertains to their perception of their classrooms' indoor environment. The schools include a middle-aged, conventional school; a new, non-green school; and a new, green school certified using the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system. The methodology involved using a mobile instrument cart to conduct snapshot measurements of thermal comfort, indoor air quality, lighting and acoustics in classrooms and an occupant survey to evaluate teachers' long-term satisfaction with their classrooms' indoor environmental quality. The results showed that the new, green and new, non-green schools' classrooms performed better than the conventional, middle-aged school's classrooms with respect to some aspects of thermal comfort and indoor air quality only. Teachers in the new, green school and in the new, non-green school were more satisfied than teachers in the conventional, middle-aged school with their classrooms' overall indoor environmental quality, lighting quality and indoor air quality. Surprisingly, the new, green and new-non green school classrooms' performance were very comparable with the new, green school's classrooms performing statistically significantly better with respect to relative humidity. Similarly, none of the differences in teachers' satisfaction ratings between the new, green and new, non-green school were statistically significant.

POST-OCCUPANCY EVALUATION (POE) OF CONVENTIONAL-DESIGNED BUILDINGS: THE EFFECTS OF OCCUAPNTS’ COMFORT ON PRODUCTIVITY

2015 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Farid-Wajdi Akashah ◽  
Azlan Shah Ali ◽  
Siti Fatunah Mohd Zahari
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air Quality ◽  
Environmental Quality ◽  
Indoor Air ◽  
Work Performance ◽  
Comfort Level ◽  
Indoor Environmental Quality ◽  
Post Occupancy Evaluation ◽  
Health And Wellbeing ◽  
Spss Software

POE is important to evaluate comfort level and satisfaction of building occupants because it indicates their productivity, health, and wellbeing. It is absolutely necessary to ensure building occupants are comfortable and satisfied about buildings’ indoor environmental quality (IEQ). Productivity may be interrupted due to building occupants’ discomfort, which affect their work performance. This study presents the how comfort and satisfaction affects the occupants’ productivity in conventional-designed buildings. Five office buildings located in University of Malaya were selected as the case studies. 278 questionnaires feedbacks found to be useful to form a database on the IEQ. Data obtained were analyzed using SPSS software. The findings shows that majority of the respondents in conventional-designed building were slightly comfortable and satisfied about their IEQ comfort level which were indoor air quality, thermal, lighting, and noise comforts. Although, the design of conventional buildings did not taking into account on sustainability designing, it still functionally well and provided comfort which leads to increasing of employees productivity. The associative test showed significant correlation between illness symptom and IEQ components. Admin buildings had more noticeable illness symptoms in contrast with Faculty buildings. It could be concluded that building occupants’ productivity were least affected by the conventional-design building.  

scholarly journals Parameters and indicators used in Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) studies: a review

2021 ◽  
Vol 2042 (1) ◽  
pp. 012132
Author(s):  
Muriel Diaz ◽  
Maria Beatriz Piderit ◽  
Shady Attia
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Quality ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Systemic Approach ◽  
Integrated Analysis ◽  
School Buildings ◽  
Indoor Environmental Quality ◽  
Broad Concept ◽  
Educational Spaces ◽  
And Performance

Abstract Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) is a broad concept, which seeks to define when a built space provides welfare to its occupants. In general, it is defined as the condition of thermal, visual, acoustic and air quality comfort and depends on multiple factors. In the case of school buildings, the relevance of IEQ is related to its effects on the wellbeing, health and performance of the students and teachers. This research summarizes previous studies of IEQ from a multivariable perspective to prove that this research area needs to be further developed. Previous results show that an integrated analysis of IEQ parameters could better understand the IEQ perception of their occupants. Research on IEQ in schools generally refers to one or two aspects of the four. Even the most recent research deals with these topics separately, without using a systemic approach. The reductionism generated by isolating parameters allows us to study a parameter in detail but does not evaluate the environmental quality of the space. This is why new metrics are necessary to describe, assess and compare IEQ in educational spaces under a systemic approach.

scholarly journals Associations between indoor environmental quality in schools and symptom reporting in pupil-administered questionnaires

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kateryna Savelieva ◽  
Tero Marttila ◽  
Jussi Lampi ◽  
Sari Ung-Lanki ◽  
Marko Elovainio ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Secondary Schools ◽  
Primary School ◽  
Environmental Quality ◽  
School Environment ◽  
Summary Score ◽  
Symptom Reporting ◽  
School Buildings ◽  
Indoor Environmental Quality ◽  
Primary School Pupils

Abstract Background The associations between indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in homes and symptom reporting of children have been extensively studied, but only few large-scale studies have been done in schools. We examined associations between expert-assessed IEQ in schools and pupils’ reporting of different symptoms, and whether associations were stronger if participants relate symptoms to the school environment. Methods The questionnaire survey was done in all primary and secondary schools in two areas of Helsinki, Finland. Primary school pupils (grade 3–6, n = 8775, 99 school-buildings) and secondary school pupils (grade 7–9, n = 3410, 30 school-buildings) reported their symptoms. Symptoms were combined into respiratory, lower respiratory, eye, skin, and general symptom groups. Surveys were also done among the parents of the primary school pupils (grade 1–6, n = 3540, 88 school buildings), but results are reported only in the supplement due to the low response rate (20% in 2017 and 13% in 2018). The associations between IEQ and symptoms were analyzed using multilevel logistic regression analysis. Results Several of the IEQ indicators were highly correlated and indicators were therefore mainly analyzed by combining them into a summary score and into latent classes. Dose-response associations were found between IEQ problems and higher reporting of respiratory and general symptoms among both primary and secondary school pupils. Some associations were also observed with lower respiratory and skin symptoms, but not with eye symptoms. The associations were somewhat stronger with symptoms related to the school environment compared to symptoms reported without such relation: for a unit change in IEQ summary score and respiratory symptoms in primary schools, odds ratios were 1.07 (95% CI 1.02–1.06) and 1.04 (95% CI 1.04–1.10), and in secondary schools 1.09 (95% CI 1.01–1.09) and 1.05 (95% CI 1.02–1.17), respectively. Conclusions Expert-assessed IEQ problems in schools were associated with increased reporting of especially respiratory and general symptoms. The associations were only somewhat stronger in magnitude for symptoms reported in relation to the school environment compared to symptoms reported without such relation.

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