scholarly journals Strengthening Taiwan’s Green Building Certification System from Aspects of Productivity and Energy Costs to Provide a Healthier Workplace

Atmosphere ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 118
Author(s):  
Ruey-Lung Hwang ◽  
Wei-An Chen ◽  
Yu-Teng Weng
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air ◽  
Green Building ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Green Buildings ◽  
Personnel Cost ◽  
Labor Costs ◽  
Certification System ◽  
Health And Well Being

This study estimates the relationship between poor indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and the increasing labor costs in green buildings in Taiwan. Specifically, poor performance of IEQ including HVAC, lighting, and indoor air quality, influences the health and well-being of occupants and leads to worse productivity, ultimately causing increased personnel cost. In Taiwan’s green building certification (GBC) system, the energy-savings category is mandatory while the IEQ category is only optional. It means that certified building cases may not reach the expected level in IEQ. Thus, this study reviews the thermal environment, indoor air quality (IAQ), and illumination performances of IEQ-certified and non-IEQ-certified buildings in 20 green buildings. Building energy and IEQ simulations were conducted to analyze the relationships between indoor comfort, energy cost, and personnel cost in green buildings. The results show that IEQ-certified green buildings averagely perform better than non-IEQ-certified ones in the aspects of IEQ and building costs. Besides, 3 of 13 non-IEQ-certified green buildings undertake extremely high additional expenditure for the poor IEQ. The results correspond to some previous findings that green-certified buildings do not necessarily guarantee good building performance. This study further inspects the pros and cons of Taiwan’s GBC system and proposes recommendations against its insufficient IEQ evaluation category. As the trade-off of energy-saving benefits with health and well-being in green buildings has always been a concern, this study aims to stimulate more quantitative research and promote a more comprehensive green building certification system in Taiwan.

scholarly journals Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Performance in Refurbished Projects: A Case Study of Two Private Schools in Selangor

2019 ◽  
Vol 266 ◽  
pp. 02013
Author(s):  
E.M.A Zawawi ◽  
A.Z Azaiz ◽  
S.N Kamaruzzaman ◽  
N.M. Ishak ◽  
F.N.M Yussof
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air Quality ◽  
Private Schools ◽  
Indoor Air ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Ventilation System ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Improvement Plan ◽  
Health And Well Being

This study discusses the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) in two refurbished private schools in Shah Alam, Selangor. The level of IAQ may affect the comfort, health and well-being of the occupants of the building. Lack of monitoring IAQ in a school may affect the academic performance of the children. The objectives of the research are to observe the ventilation system used in the selected school and the comfort of the occupants; to measure the IAQ; and finally to provide an improvement plan for better air quality. The result shows that the IAQ level of both schools was average, so both were classified as safe for occupation. It is anticipated that this study will benefit the school owners in making sure that their school buildings are conducive to teaching and learning.

Indoor air quality prediction systems for smart environments: A systematic review

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 433-453
Author(s):  
Jagriti Saini ◽  
Maitreyee Dutta ◽  
Gonçalo Marques
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Smart Environments ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
Prediction Systems ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Health And Well Being

Air quality is a critical matter of concern in terms of the impact on public health and well-being. Although the consequences of poor air quality are more severe in developing countries, they also have a critical impact in developed countries. Healthcare costs due to air pollution reach $150 billion in the USA, whereas particulate matter causes 412,000 premature deaths in Europe, every year. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), indoor air pollutant levels can be up to 100 times higher in comparison to outdoor air quality. Indoor air quality (IAQ) is in the top five environmental risks to global health and well-being. The research community explored the scope of artificial intelligence (AI) in the past years to deal with this problem. The IAQ prediction systems contribute to smart environments where advanced sensing technologies can create healthy living conditions for building occupants. This paper reviews the applications and potential of AI for the prediction of IAQ to enhance building environment and public health. The results show that most of the studies analyzed incorporate neural networks-based models and the preferred evaluation metrics are RMSE, R 2 score and error rate. Furthermore, 66.6% of the studies include CO2 sensors for IAQ assessment. Temperature and humidity parameters are also included in 90.47% and 85.71% of the proposed methods, respectively. This study also presents some limitations of the current research activities associated with the evaluation of the impact of different pollutants based on different geographical conditions and living environments. Moreover, the use of reliable and calibrated sensor networks for real-time data collection is also a significant challenge.

scholarly journals Indoor Air Quality Monitoring Systems for Enhanced Living Environments: A Review toward Sustainable Smart Cities

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 4024 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gonçalo Marques ◽  
Jagriti Saini ◽  
Maitreyee Dutta ◽  
Pradeep Kumar Singh ◽  
Wei-Chiang Hong
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Internet Of Things ◽  
Indoor Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Quality Monitoring ◽  
Monitoring Systems ◽  
Air Quality Monitoring ◽  
Health And Well Being

Smart cities follow different strategies to face public health challenges associated with socio-economic objectives. Buildings play a crucial role in smart cities and are closely related to people’s health. Moreover, they are equally essential to meet sustainable objectives. People spend most of their time indoors. Therefore, indoor air quality has a critical impact on health and well-being. With the increasing population of elders, ambient-assisted living systems are required to promote occupational health and well-being. Furthermore, living environments must incorporate monitoring systems to detect unfavorable indoor quality scenarios in useful time. This paper reviews the current state of the art on indoor air quality monitoring systems based on Internet of Things and wireless sensor networks in the last five years (2014–2019). This document focuses on the architecture, microcontrollers, connectivity, and sensors used by these systems. The main contribution is to synthesize the existing body of knowledge and identify common threads and gaps that open up new significant and challenging future research directions. The results show that 57% of the indoor air quality monitoring systems are based on Arduino, 53% of the systems use Internet of Things, and WSN architectures represent 33%. The CO2 and PM monitoring sensors are the most monitored parameters in the analyzed literature, corresponding to 67% and 29%, respectively.

Indoor Air Quality and Green Building: Nexus for Sustainable Development

2020 ◽  
pp. 199-214
Author(s):  
Soham Desai ◽  
Twinkle Kathiriya ◽  
Abhishek Gupta ◽  
Veerendra Sahu ◽  
Manish Yadav ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air ◽  
Green Building

scholarly journals Quality of life control by selected methods of air exchange in a typical apartment building

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iveta Bullová ◽  
Peter Kapalo ◽  
Dušan Katunský
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air ◽  
Allergic Diseases ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Indoor Climate ◽  
Apartment Building ◽  
Change Rate ◽  
Air Change Rate ◽  
Negative Effect

Air change rate is an important parameter for quantification of ventilation heat losses and also affects the indoor climate of buildings. Indoor air quality is significantly associated with ventilation. If air change isn't sufficient, trapped allergens, pollutants and irritants can degrade the indoor air quality and affect the well-being of a building's occupants. Many studies on ventilation and health have concluded that lower air change rates can have a negative effect on people’s health and low ventilation may result in an increase in allergic diseases. Quantification of air change rate is complicated, since it is affected by a number of parameters, of which the one of the most variable is the air-wind flow. This study aims to determination and comparison of values of the air change rate in two methods - by quantifying of aerodynamic coefficient Cp = Cpe - Cpi – so called aerodynamic quantification of the building and the methodology based on experimental measurements of carbon dioxide in the selected reference room in apartment building.

Indoor air quality prediction using optimizers: A comparative study

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 7053-7069
Author(s):  
Jagriti Saini ◽  
Maitreyee Dutta ◽  
Gonçalo Marques
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Indoor Air Quality ◽  
Mean Square Error ◽  
Indoor Air ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Percentage Error ◽  
Cow Dung ◽  
Mean Square ◽  
Human Beings

Indoor air pollution (IAP) has become a serious concern for developing countries around the world. As human beings spend most of their time indoors, pollution exposure causes a significant impact on their health and well-being. Long term exposure to particulate matter (PM) leads to the risk of chronic health issues such as respiratory disease, lung cancer, cardiovascular disease. In India, around 200 million people use fuel for cooking and heating needs; out of which 0.4% use biogas; 0.1% electricity; 1.5% lignite, coal or charcoal; 2.9% kerosene; 8.9% cow dung cake; 28.6% liquified petroleum gas and 49% use firewood. Almost 70% of the Indian population lives in rural areas, and 80% of those households rely on biomass fuels for routine needs. With 1.3 million deaths per year, poor air quality is the second largest killer in India. Forecasting of indoor air quality (IAQ) can guide building occupants to take prompt actions for ventilation and management on useful time. This paper proposes prediction of IAQ using Keras optimizers and compares their prediction performance. The model is trained using real-time data collected from a cafeteria in the Chandigarh city using IoT sensor network. The main contribution of this paper is to provide a comparative study on the implementation of seven Keras Optimizers for IAQ prediction. The results show that SGD optimizer outperforms other optimizers to ensure adequate and reliable predictions with mean square error = 0.19, mean absolute error = 0.34, root mean square error = 0.43, R2 score = 0.999555, mean absolute percentage error = 1.21665%, and accuracy = 98.87%.

scholarly journals FACTORS AFFECTING VENTILATION, INDOOR-AIR QUALITY AND ACOUSTICAL QUALITY IN ‘GREEN’ AND NON-‘GREEN’ BUILDINGS: A PILOT STUDY

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 168-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alireza Khaleghi ◽  
Karen Bartlett ◽  
Murray Hodgson
Keyword(s):  
Mechanical Ventilation ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air Quality ◽  
Indoor Air ◽  
Natural Ventilation ◽  
Sound Pressure ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Green Buildings ◽  
Noise Levels ◽  
Ventilation Rates

This paper discusses a pilot project involving the direct monitoring of ventilation, indoor-air quality and the acoustical conditions in selected nominally ‘green’ and non-‘green’ buildings located on a university campus. The objectives were to measure parameters quantifying these three aspects of indoor environmental quality, determine the relationships between them and the building-design concepts, and evaluate the implications of the results for ventilation-system design, especially in ‘green’ buildings. Measurements were made in rooms, with and without acoustical treatment, in buildings with natural ventilation or mechanical (displacement and/or mixed-flow) ventilation systems. Measurements were made of ventilation rates (air changes per hour), indoor air quality (respirable-fibre, total-VOC and ultrafine-particulate concentrations), and the acoustical conditions (noise levels and reverberation times). Correlations between the environmental results, the building concept, the ventilation concept and the building window status were explored. In rooms with natural ventilation, low-frequency noise and total sound-pressure levels were lower; however, the rooms had higher ultrafine-particulate counts and lower ventilation rates. Rooms with mechanical ventilation had higher low-frequency and total sound-pressure levels, higher ventilation rates and fibre concentrations, but lower concentrations of ultrafine particulates. It was concluded that, in general, mechanical ventilation can provide better indoor air-quality, but that HVAC noise is an issue if the system is not properly designed. In ‘green’ buildings, noise levels were acceptable when the windows were closed, but increasing the ventilation rate by opening the windows resulted in higher noise levels. The results suggest that the acceptability of environmental factors in buildings depends on the degree of compliance of the design and its implementation with standards and design guidelines (i.e. for ventilation, air quality, thermal comfort, etc.), whether the original design concept is ‘green’ or non-‘green’.

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.

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