Environmental Performance Evaluation of Heating and Cooling Between Sustainable and Conventional Office Building

The aim of the study was to evaluate the long-term environmental performance effectiveness of heating and cooling systems between ‘sustainable’ and conventional office buildings. The key research question that this study tried to answear is, ‘To what extent do sustainable office buildings remain sustainable in the long run?’ On this basis, two hypotheses (HP) were tested: HP1: Sustainable buildings remain sustainable in the long run. HP2: Current indicators fulfil the role for determining long term sustainability. From the sustainability point of view, this study focused only on the environmental aspect. The word ‘sustainable’ has been used for identifying office buildings where environmental aspects have been taken into consideration through sustainability approaches. In order to address the first hypothesis, initially this study used a case study comparison approach to compare ‘sustainable’ with conventional office buildings, by comparing building design and heating-cooling system characteristics. This helped to raise understanding of the environmental characteristics that classify an office building as sustainable. Two case studies were used: The first case study comparison consists of a new ‘sustainable’ BREEAM excellent certified office building from 2009 and a conventional office building from the 1960s that had no refurbishments. The second case study comparison consists of a refurbished ‘sustainable’ BREEAM excellent certified office building compared to a conventional office building from the 1950s that had an upgrade in the heating system. The study then focused on assessing the current environmental performance of heating and cooling between the case study buildings. Therefore Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) methods were used including site visits, interviews, recording of heating and cooling systems, collection of heating-cooling consumption data, conducting thermographic surveys, applying Heating Degree Data (HDD) Evaluation and undertaking Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA has played a key role in evaluating the long run environmental performance of heating and cooling systems. The LCA evaluated two performance indicators: a) energy consumption of heating and cooling for 2 years of operation and b) the raw-material consumption of heating and cooling system production. Further, hypothetical long run scenarios were developed to consider the consequences of the existing operational and embodied raw-material emissions in the long run. Sensitivity LCA analysis was also used in order to evaluate the environmental impacts of alternative scenarios of different low/zero carbon technologies if they were installed in the case study buildings. Uncertainty analysis was used to assess the significance of uncertainty in the data evaluated. The key outcome of this study was the need for developing a new Sustainability Indicator that can be used to support environment decision making in evaluating the long run environmental performance of heating and cooling systems in office buildings. The new indicator brings together all the research methods used in this study by developing further the existing energy indicator already integrated in existing Sustainable Assessment Methods (SAMs) and by developing a new indicator for raw-materials of heating and cooling systems. Suggestions for their integration on existing SAMs are also discussed. Finally the study ends with key conclusions and suggestions for further research

Digital Crowdsourcing in Healthcare Environment Co-design

Improving user experiences of healthcare environments via their participation has become a central theme in healthcare studies and strategic agendas. The co-design approach is often utilized to take into account opinions from different stakeholders including hospital staff. However, there are a number of competing stimuli and demands on staff at any point in time potentially making it difficult for them to participate in the co-design processes. Digital crowdsourcing may engage staff in participating in the design and appraisal of hospital environments when they have a spare moment by collecting small amounts of relevant data. In order to explore this, we have implemented a digital crowdsourcing co-design prototype. As users’ perceived acceptance of technologies is among the determining factors for a successful digital approach, in this paper, we report on participants’ acceptance of the prototype, aiming to reflect if and to what extend they accept this prototype to aid further development

Digital co-design : a future method?

This paper reports on a study assessing the use of a digital co- design method for use in hospital design. Here we present findings on users’ perceptions towards ease of use and behavioural intention of using a digital co-design method in comparison with using a paper-based co-design method. The study was conducted in a simulated hospital ward. The results showed that participants found limitations with the current iteration of digital method negatively affected their perceptions regarding ease of use compared to the paper-based method. However, behavioural intention showed a positive trend towards future selection of digital-based methods over paper-based methods. Future work will look in depth at what features of the digital method require improvement to enhance perceptions of ease of use in order to respond to end-user behavioural intentions

Digital co-design applied to healthcare environments : a comparative study

Co-design approaches have been used by different sectors, to understand end-user perspectives. They have been diversified from traditional use in product development to sectors such as healthcare environments. They put emphasis on innovation with end-users where this is seen as a source of competitive advantage, and fits with the logic of end-user-led innovation. It does however ask the question of how to enable such approaches and if digital approaches are more useful than traditional paper-based methods. We propose a digital co-design tool for environment improvement that can potentially promote user involvement. This paper reports on a comparative study on co-designing a healthcare environment using a digital tool versus a traditional paper-based tool. Discussion centers on the benefits and drawbacks of proposed approach