Indoor Environmental Quality Survey in Research Institute: A Floor-by-Floor Analysis

Comprehensively monitoring indoor environmental quality (IEQ) parameters and their dynamic relations is essential to ensure improved productivity and a healthy environment for building occupants. Although IEQ significantly influences working efficiency, studies addressing this aspect with researchers in institutes as the focal point are limited. Thus, this study employed drill-down analyses, such as floor-by-floor and building-by-building examinations and used an occupant IEQ survey approach to evaluate working conditions in research buildings. This study systematically and objectively assessed IEQ using the Korea building occupant survey system. The results indicate that acoustic qualities affect the work productivity and satisfaction of the building occupants. The floor-by-floor analysis is necessary to identify IEQ factors and the reasons for the satisfaction of occupants. Additionally, it is important to improve the user-friendliness of the system, implement frequent survey distribution systems, and empirically analyze data associations among building, spatial, and demographical characteristics.

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

Proccedings of 10th International Conference "Environmental Engineering" ◽

10.3846/enviro.2017.266 ◽

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%.

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The impact of indoor environmental quality on work productivity in university open-plan research offices

Building and Environment ◽

10.1016/j.buildenv.2017.07.003 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 124 ◽

pp. 78-89 ◽

Cited By ~ 48

Author(s):

Shengxian Kang ◽

Dayi Ou ◽

Cheuk Ming Mak

Keyword(s):

Environmental Quality ◽

Work Productivity ◽

Indoor Environmental Quality ◽

Open Plan ◽

The Impact

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Working from Home in Italy during COVID-19 Lockdown: A Survey to Assess the Indoor Environmental Quality and Productivity

Buildings ◽

10.3390/buildings11120660 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (12) ◽

pp. 660

Author(s):

Francesco Salamone ◽

Benedetta Barozzi ◽

Alice Bellazzi ◽

Lorenzo Belussi ◽

Ludovico Danza ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Environmental Quality ◽

Work Productivity ◽

Support Vector ◽

Indoor Environmental Quality ◽

Visual Comfort ◽

Web Based ◽

Relevant Variable ◽

Work From Home ◽

Working From Home

Italians were the first European citizens to experience the lockdown due to Sars-Cov-2 in March 2020. Most employees were forced to work from home. People suddenly had to share common living spaces with family members for longer periods of time and convert home spaces into workplaces. This inevitably had a subjective impact on the perception, satisfaction and preference of indoor environmental quality and work productivity. A web-based survey was designed and administered to Italian employees to determine how they perceived the indoor environmental quality of residential spaces when Working From Home (WFH) and to investigate the relationship between different aspects of users’ satisfaction. A total of 330 valid questionnaires were collected and analysed. The article reports the results of the analyses conducted using a descriptive approach and predictive models to quantify comfort in living spaces when WFH, focusing on respondents’ satisfaction. Most of them were satisfied with the indoor environmental conditions (89% as the sum of “very satisfied” and “satisfied” responses for thermal comfort, 74% for visual comfort, 68% for acoustic quality and 81% for indoor air quality), while the layout of the furniture negatively influenced the WFH experience: 45% of the participants expressed an unsatisfactory or neutral opinion. The results of the sentiment analysis confirmed this trend. Among the Indoor Environmental factors that affect productivity, visual comfort is the most relevant variable. As for the predictive approach using machine learning, the Support Vector Machine classifier performed best in predicting overall satisfaction.

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A real-time management system for the indoor environmental quality and energy efficiency in a hotel guestroom

International Journal of RF Technologies ◽

10.3233/rft-200263 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-17

Author(s):

Qingyun Li ◽

Choongwan Koo ◽

Lin Lu ◽

Jie Han

Keyword(s):

Energy Efficiency ◽

Real Time ◽

Environmental Quality ◽

Time Management ◽

Hotel Industry ◽

Indoor Environmental Quality ◽

The Novel ◽

Healthy Environment ◽

Novel Approach ◽

Green Hotel

With the concept of green hotel, the hotel industry has started to consider a sustainable design and operation to obtain more competitiveness. It is needed to implement a convenient way to recognize a real-time situation about the indoor environmental quality (e.g., temperature, relative humidity, CO2, TVOCs, PM2.5, etc.) and the relevant energy efficiency in a hotel guestroom. This study aimed to develop a scalable integrated platform for providing real-time monitoring, alert notification, and analytics so as to satisfy the level of the occupants’ comfort and satisfaction. Facility managers could gain insight from the real-time hierarchical and historical information and take actions at a point of time. The novel approach could create a comfortable and healthy environment for the occupants in a hotel guestroom while realizing the energy efficiency in real time. The proposed platform was validated with three guestrooms in a hotel, and the scalability of the system was fully confirmed. In the future studies, it is expected to deploy the proposed platform to a larger physical entity of the hotel, providing flexibility and expandability in accordance with the strategic facility planning of the hotel. Furthermore, it is planned to develop various kinds of occupant-centered services in a hotel guestroom level.

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Indoor environmental quality and occupants’ productivity

Built Environment Project and Asset Management ◽

10.1108/bepam-09-2015-0046 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 6 (5) ◽

pp. 462-477

Author(s):

Harshini Mallawaarachchi ◽

Lalith De Silva ◽

Raufdeen Rameezdeen

Keyword(s):

Statistical Analysis ◽

Environmental Quality ◽

Focal Point ◽

Green Buildings ◽

Primary Data ◽

System Control ◽

Indoor Environmental Quality ◽

Structured Interviews ◽

Content Type ◽

Green Certification

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to determine the relationship between indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and occupants’ productivity improvements in green buildings in order to propose probable enhancements of national green certification criteria. Design/methodology/approach Survey approach was selected under quantitative phenomenon. Hence, questionnaire survey was selected as a primary data collection technique. It was linked to semi-structured interviews to validate survey results. The survey data were analysed by using nonparametric statistical analysis techniques, such as significance testing and Spearman’s correlation. Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) v.20 statistical analysis software was used in data analysis. Findings Seven factors were identified as significant factors which showed statistically significant monotonic correlation to major IEQ dimensions. Among those, air quality and acoustical partitioning factors confirmed a statistically significant weak positive monotonic correlation, whilst system control showed strongly positive monotonic correlation to occupants’ productivity in green buildings. Practical implications The findings can be practically implied as a basis to review the existing evaluation criteria of IEQ in national green certification system to propose probable enhancements. Originality/value The significant IEQ factors influencing occupants’ productivity were determined as the focal point of this research. Accordingly, new provisions were proposed to enhance the national green certification criteria.

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Sick building syndrome and office space design in Cairo, Egypt

Indoor and Built Environment ◽

10.1177/1420326x211016507 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1420326X2110165

Author(s):

Nada Farrag ◽

Manal A. S. Abou El-Ela ◽

Sherif Ezzeldin

Keyword(s):

Environmental Quality ◽

Sick Building Syndrome ◽

Working Environment ◽

Office Workers ◽

Indoor Environmental Quality ◽

Design Elements ◽

Healthy Environment ◽

Space Design ◽

Science Technology ◽

Sick Building

Sick building syndrome is a group of symptoms relatively common among office workers; such symptoms could have an impact on the worker's productivity. The aim of this research is to provide a better understanding of the relation between design elements, indoor environmental quality and sick building syndrome within office spaces in Cairo, Egypt. Results show that a healthy environment leads to higher level of office productivity. Several design elements were chosen to be analysed according to previous studies, and their relation to the indoor environmental quality was noted. The prevalence of these elements on sick building syndrome was studied. An empirical comparative study has been conducted within two administrative office buildings at Cairo campus of the ‘Arab Academy for Science Technology & Maritime Transport' in Egypt. Data collection was done by a self-administrated questionnaire. The questionnaire includes personal background, work design elements, socio-demographic elements and symptoms of sick building syndrome. Headache and fatigue were the most prevalent symptoms in both buildings. This study revealed that office comfort is the most important factor affecting office occupants and should be taken seriously when designing office spaces for better working environment free of sick building syndrome.

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