KxKali v0.1: A Work-in-Progress Tool for Streamlining Thermal Comfort Evaluation in Building Design and Occupancy

Thermal comfort evaluation is crucial in the design of buildings, as it impacts the well-being and productivity of building occupants. Many national regulations and international standards provide guidelines for assessing thermal comfort. In order to simplify this process, we have developed a program called KxKali, which is intended to evaluate thermal comfort based on temperature and relative humidity data input using the adaptative comfort model of EN 16798. The current version of the software, v0.1, is only able to accept data from computer simulation using the official Spanish simulation software HULC and performs graphing and counting automatically, without the need for the user to edit, modify or handle any data manually. By using HULC as the source of input data, the tool can take advantage of the software’s established reputation and acceptance among professionals in the building design industry in Spain, streamlining the comfort evaluation process by eliminating the need to generate input data manually, or using additional software. However, future versions are planned to accept data from other software and also monitored data. In addition, there are plans to implement the evaluation of thermal comfort following other regulations. The ultimate goal of this project is to convert KxKali into a user-friendly and widely accessible web-app that professionals can use in the design phase without performing any additional work apart from what they are already doing for energetic certification, which may improve building design by allowing architects and engineers to quickly evaluate different thermal comfort scenarios and optimize their design for comfort, and also facilitate the process of post-occupancy evaluations (POE). The goal of this presentation is to show the current capabilities of the KxKali tool, and to obtain feedback from other specialists on how to improve it and make it more widely useful. In the paper, the limitations of using simulation data from HULC and the ongoing developments of KxKali such as accepting monitoring data and converting it into a web-app will be discussed. Additionally, the paper will showcase mockups of the future web-app version of the tool, providing a glimpse into its intended user interface, and the expected reporting and output

Evaluación de la información de sostenibilidad en el sector bancario en economías emergentes durante la crisis financiera

La Responsabilidad Social Corporativa es un concepto que cada día ha ganado un mayor protagonismo en el ámbito empresarial debido a que los grupos de interés están cada vez más sensibilizados con los temas medioambientales y sociales. Este cambio es especialmente notable para el caso del sector financiero debido en gran parte a la crisis financiera sufrida en los últimos años y que ha puesto de manifiesto el hecho de que no sólo deben centrarse en la obtención de beneficios, sino que existe la necesidad de buscar un equilibrio entre economía, sociedad y medioambiente. En este trabajo, nosotros hemos analizado la calidad de las memorias de sostenibilidad publicadas por bancos pertenecientes a economías que han sufrido un menor impacto de la crisis financiera. Con ello pretendemos comprobar si existen diferencias en cuanto a la calidad de la información sostenible publicada y comparar los posibles efectos de la crisis financiera internacional sobre las memorias de sostenibilidad de los distintos países. Para ello, también hemos analizado 15 entidades financieras españolas, estadounidenses y británicas, países donde el impacto de la crisis ha sido mayor. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que existen diferencias significativas entre los países, sin embargo, estas diferencias parece ser que son más debidas a cuestiones ideológicas o culturales que a la situación de crisis financiera existente

Characterization of the Thermal Behavior of Semi-Exterior Laundry Spaces in an Overheating Passivhaus Residential Building in Bilbao, Spain

Overheating in buildings is a growing challenge in temperate climates, even in those where the traditional design focus was on protecting from cold and winter energy savings. This paper addresses a collateral problem that arose during the study of overheating in a residential Passivhaus building in Bilbao, northern Spain. Specifically, the local climate of three laundry spaces was investigated, where high daytime and nighttime temperatures were recorded. An extensive monitoring campaign was carried out with different durations up to more than 21,000 h over four years, and the collected data were compared with outdoor climatic conditions. The results allowed for characterizing the thermal behavior of these semi-outdoor spaces and show the magnitude of the problem, quantifying it. Laundry spaces were confirmed to be hotter and dryer than the outdoor climate almost always. The mean average difference between the monitored rooms and the exterior was quantified to be around positive 5 °C during both daytime and nighttime. Extreme heat events were documented, with maximum temperatures above 50 °C and temperature differentials of up to 15.85 °C. In addition, this article comments on the impact of overheating these laundry spaces on the interior of the dwellings, pointing out the differences between the assumptions made during the design phase of the project and the observed or measured reality. Questions were raised about the possible implications of the peculiar performance of these semi-outdoor spaces on the mechanical heat recovery ventilation system (MHRV). The data presented in this article revealed and quantified a design flaw that went unnoticed by all agents involved in the planning, design, and construction of the 361-apartment project. The inability to predict the behavior of the studied spaces has had a negative impact on building performance during the summer months and has prevented the implementation of strategies that could have been beneficial in other periods. A thorough analysis of the thermal behavior of similar spaces becomes essential to prevent performance gaps in future projects and to inform adequate building modeling in the design stagesThis research was funded by the Department of Territorial Planning and Housing of the Basque Government. The same funder covered both the acquisition of the equipment and the APC

Comparative Analysis of the Effect of the Evolution of Energy Saving Regulations on the Indoor Summer Comfort of Five Homes on the Coast of the Basque Country

In the last decade, several European directives have been established to contribute to the 2020, 2030 and 2050 energy saving targets and impose energy efficiency requirements for new construction, existing buildings and building renovation operations. One of the ways to achieve said objectives is to rely on the most demanding energy efficiency labels existing in Europe, such as Passivhaus, and to implement similar concepts into the national energy regulations of European countries based on a high-performance thermal envelope (high insulation and high-performance windows), high airtightness and high-performance heat-recovery ventilation systems, and solar heat harvesting. This energy conservation concept has shown to be effective for houses with low-density occupation in cold climates, but may cause severe overheating problems in denser collective housing in temperate and hot climates with higher solar radiation. To assess this impact, five flats in three developments from different periods that range from no insulation at all to a nZEB, Passivhaus-certified high-rise are compared in this paper, using data from a monitoring campaign during the summer of 2020. The results show and quantify the strong impact the evolution of the energy saving regulatory trend has had on summer indoor comfort, which may in some cases lead to previously unnecessary air conditioning for cooling and, ultimately, be counterproductive towards the end goals of reducing energy consumption and greenhouse-effect gas emissions and mitigating climate change.This study has been partially funded by the Department of Architecture of the University of The Basque Country (UPV-EHU). In addition, part of the work presented in this paper was funded by the research Project 3SqAir, Sustainable Smart Strategy for Air Quality Assurance in Classrooms (SOE4/P1/E1004), funded by the Interreg Sudo

Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Classrooms at the University of the Basque Country through a User-Informed Natural Ventilation Demonstrator

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a renewed interest in indoor air quality to limit viral spread. In the case of educational spaces, due to the high concentration of people and the fact that most of the existing buildings do not have any mechanical ventilation system, the different administrations have established natural ventilation protocols to guarantee an air quality that reduces risk of contagion by the SARS-CoV-2 virus after the return to the classrooms. Many of the initial protocols established a ventilation pattern that opted for continuous or intermittent ventilation to varying degrees of intensity. This study, carried out on a university campus in Spain, analyses the performance of natural ventilation activated through the information provided by monitoring and visualisation of real-time data. In order to carry out this analysis, a experiment was set up where a preliminary study of ventilation without providing information to the users was carried out, which was then compared with the result of providing live feedback to the occupants of two classrooms and an administration office in different periods of 2020, 2021 and 2022. In the administration office, a CO2-concentration-based method was applied retrospectively to assess the risk of airborne infection. This experience has served as a basis to establish a route for user-informed improvement of air quality in educational spaces in general through low-cost systems that allow a rational use of natural ventilation while helping maintain an adequate compromise between IAQ, comfort and energy consumption, without having to resort to mechanical ventilation systems.This research was funded under the title “Proyecto Piloto Sobre Calidad del Aire en Espacios Interiores Universitarios” in the CBL program 2020–2021 and 2021–2022, promoted by the Directorate of Sustainability, Vice-Rectorate for Innovation and Social Commitment of the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU)

CIBERER : Spanish national network for research on rare diseases: A highly productive collaborative initiative

Altres ajuts: Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII); Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.CIBER (Center for Biomedical Network Research; Centro de Investigación Biomédica En Red) is a public national consortium created in 2006 under the umbrella of the Spanish National Institute of Health Carlos III (ISCIII). This innovative research structure comprises 11 different specific areas dedicated to the main public health priorities in the National Health System. CIBERER, the thematic area of CIBER focused on rare diseases (RDs) currently consists of 75 research groups belonging to universities, research centers, and hospitals of the entire country. CIBERER's mission is to be a center prioritizing and favoring collaboration and cooperation between biomedical and clinical research groups, with special emphasis on the aspects of genetic, molecular, biochemical, and cellular research of RDs. This research is the basis for providing new tools for the diagnosis and therapy of low-prevalence diseases, in line with the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium (IRDiRC) objectives, thus favoring translational research between the scientific environment of the laboratory and the clinical setting of health centers. In this article, we intend to review CIBERER's 15-year journey and summarize the main results obtained in terms of internationalization, scientific production, contributions toward the discovery of new therapies and novel genes associated to diseases, cooperation with patients' associations and many other topics related to RD research