Post-Occupancy Evaluation and IEQ Measurements from 64 Office Buildings: Critical Factors and Thresholds for User Satisfaction on Thermal Quality

The indoor environmental quality (IEQ) of buildings can have a strong influence on occupants’ comfort, productivity, and health. Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) is necessary in assessing the IEQ of the built environment, and it typically relies on the subjective surveys of thermal quality, air quality, visual quality, and acoustic quality. In this research, we expanded POE to include both objective IEQ measurements and the technical attributes of building systems (TABS) that may affect indoor environment and user satisfaction. The suite of three tools, including user satisfaction survey, workstation IEQ measurements, and TABS in the National Environmental Assessment Toolkit (NEAT) has been deployed in 1601 workstations in 64 office buildings, generating a rich database for statistical evaluation of possible correlations between the physical attributes of workstations, environmental conditions, and user satisfaction. Multivariate regression and multiple correlation coefficient statistical analysis revealed the relationship between measured and perceived IEQ indices, interdependencies between IEQ indices, and other satisfaction variables of significance. The results showed that overall, 55% of occupants responded as “satisfied” or “neutral”, and 45% reported being “dissatisfied” in their thermal quality. Given the dataset, air temperature in work area, size of thermal zone, window quality, level of temperature control, and radiant temperature asymmetry with façade are the critical factors for thermal quality satisfaction in the field. As a result, the outcome of this research contributes to identifying correlations between occupant satisfaction, measured data, and technical attributes of building systems. The presented integrated IEQ assessment method can further afford robust predictions of building performance against metrics and guidelines for IEQ standards to capture revised IEQ thresholds that impact building occupants’ satisfaction.</jats:p

Managing Electrotechnology Innovation in the USA

In 1982, IIASA initiated an Innovation Management Task that brought together many leading managers from the electrotechnology industry as well as researchers and policy makers. This endeavor resulted in several meetings with the active participation and support of representatives from industry from both East and West. The first of these meetings, of which Electrosila was one of the supporting organizations, took place in Leningrad in May 1982. This meeting also identified the focus of those future activities that were esteemed to be of predominant importance for managers in the electrotechnology industry. These included the strategic development of a company, and the human and organizational factors in managing innovation. In this paper, the author presents an overview of innovation management in the United States electrotechnology industry from an historical perspective. He touches on all three factors that were recommended at the Leningrad meeting and describes them from the point of view of his many years of first-hand experience and direct involvement. Further, he describes the role of the user in as much as it significantly affects the technical development of the industry. The paper describes in clear, concise scientific terms the interaction of new technologies and the economy of industrial performance as well as national policy and its impact on the overall development. This paper will be of interest not only to policy researchers, but also to managers from industry and decision makers in government. It is also a welcome sign to all former participants in the innovation management meetings that IIASA strongly supports this activity

Comparison of data-driven building energy use models for retrofit impact evaluation

A change-point (piecewise linear regression) model fitted to the pre-retrofit data as the counterfactual for the savings calculation, is considered to be the best approach to evaluating the energy savings of building retrofits ( ASHRAE Guideline 14). However, when applied to a large portfolio savings analysis with substantial multi-year data, the change-point model does not fit the data well in some cases. The study thus aims to improve the accuracy of the changepoint model by: 1) using more advanced non-linear models, 2) incorporating additional input features, and 3) increasing the time resolution of input variables. We found that random forest regression (RF) models with an array of climate (humidity, wind, solar radiation, etc.), time (day of the week, season, holiday), and energy consumption of the immediate past 1-4 hours (energy lag terms) outperformed the change-point model, shallow neural networks, and support vector machine regression (SVR). Our result implies that high resolution smart meter data should be used in place of monthly utility bills to more accurately evaluate retrofit savings. We further explored the relative contribution of the input variables to the random forest regression model using Shapley Value, a game theoretic variable importance metric. We found that the most important input feature is the energy consumption of the immediate past (or energy lag terms). We also found that solar radiation and weekend day indicators are more important than outdoor temperature. The improved model could provide better insights to portfolio managers in planning future energy retrofits. Policy makers could also use such models to evaluate the average energy saving potential for energy policy changes, such as the requirement of minimum insulation level, and lighting equipment efficiency

Elements That Contribute to Healthy Building Design

BACKGROUND: The elements that contribute to a healthy building are multifactorial and can be discussed from different perspectives. OBJECTIVES: We present three viewpoints of designing a healthy building: the importance of sustainable development, the role of occupants for ensuring indoor air quality, and ongoing developments related to indoor finishes with low chemical emissions and good fungal resistance. DISCUSSION: Sustainable design rediscovers the social, environmental, and technical values of pedestrian and mixed-use communities, using existing infrastructures including “main streets ” and small-town planning principles and recapturing indoor–outdoor relationships. This type of design introduces nonpolluting materials and assemblies with lower energy requirements and higher durability and recyclability. Building occupants play a major role in maintaining healthy indoor environments, especially in residences. Contributors to indoor air quality include cleaning habits and other behaviors; consumer products, furnishings, and appliances purchases, as well as where and how the occupants use them. Certification of consumer products and building materials as lowemitting products is a primary control measure for achieving good indoor air quality. Key products in this respect are office furniture, flooring, paints and coatings, adhesives and sealants, wall coverings, wood products, textiles, insulation, and cleaning products. Finishing materials play a major role in the quality of indoor air as related to moisture retention and mold growth. CONCLUSIONS: Sustainable design emphasizes the needs of infrastructure, lower energy consumption, durability, and recyclability. To ensure good indoor air quality, the product development for household use should aim to reduce material susceptibility to contaminants such as mold and should adopt consumer-oriented product labeling

Natural forces and the craft of building : site reconnaissance.

Thesis. 1975. M.Arch.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.Bibliography: leaves 86-88.M.Arch

Humans and Nature in the Loop: Integrating occupants & natural conditioning into advanced controls for high performance buildings

Post Occupancy Evaluation plus Measurements (POE+M) has revealed that thermal, visual, acoustic and even air quality standards derived through controlled experimentation alone does not ensure comfort or health in buildings. Introducing human input into environmental standards and into user centric controls is critically needed for a sustainable future. For over a decade, CMU’s Center for Building Performance & Diagnostics has been gathering POE+M data from over 1500 workstations around the world and testing the benefits on innovative environmental control systems. The separation of ambient and task conditioning, the provision of task controls, the introduction of occupant voting and bio-signal inputs into ambient and task set-points, offers major gains in comfort, task performance, energy savings, as well as health and wellness

Development And Evaluation Of A Simplified Modeling Approach For Hydraulic Systems

This paper presents how a hydraulic system can be properly modeled for hydraulic balancing, knowledge of flow distribution, coupled simulation, and evaluation of control, etc. It focuses on water-based heating and cooling systems, which generally have high energy efficiency in design but could perform poorly in reality due to the undersensing condition and strong thermal-hydraulic coupling. The study introduces the motivation, presents the simplified modeling methodology, and illustrates the model and simulating structure. A preliminary evaluation of the method is conducted with two simple simulations. The proposed “node-branch-state” modeling approach could be easily modified, expanded and integrated into a detailed thermal model. The paper concludes with some discussions on future work