ABSTRACT: The rehabilitation of school buildings is an imperative in Portugal. The current buildings do not
guarantee adequate conditions of habitability. So, a very ambitious public plan for rehabilitation of school
buildings which involves substantial investments is being carried. It is essential to support this investment
plan with a thorough investigation that could help and sustain the technical decisions to be taken. To that end
a research project has started with two main objectives: to evaluate the suitability of the legal requirements
currently in use in Portuguese codes regarding comfort conditions and ventilation rates through the measurement of temperature, relative humidity and carbon dioxide concentration in classrooms of different schools; and make an optimization of constructive solutions to be used in retrofitting of school buildings using computer simulations, artificial neural networks and genetic algorithms. This paper presents the initial results of this project, from the measured values starts a preliminary discussion and launches the future works of the research project
