Publications related to Relations between perceived indoor environment characteristics and well being of occupants at individual level

What is NExT? A new conceptual model for comfort, satisfaction, health, and well-being in buildings

Buildings are designed to respond to functional and regulatory needs, providing comfortable conditions to occupants, offering satisfactory environmental settings, minimising health risks, and enhancing individual and collective quality of life. Although th ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Assessment of Monitoring Strategies for Inhalation Exposure and Occupancy in Office Environments

Seoyeon Yun

Given people's significant time spent indoors, ensuring good indoor air quality (IAQ) is essential because it significantly influences occupants' health and productivity. Office buildings consume about 50% of commercial building energy and 18% of total bui ...

EPFL2023

Building ventilation and outdoor air pollution: Implications for health, comfort and energy

Evangelos Belias

As humans spend most of their time indoors, indoor air quality (IAQ) significantly impacts their health. In parallel, building ventilation consumes significant energy, contributing to climate change. However, the relationships between the building ventilat ...

EPFL2023

Dynamic indoor thermal environment using Reinforcement Learning-based controls: Opportunities and challenges

Dolaana Khovalyg, Arnab Chatterjee

Currently, the indoor thermal environment in many buildings is controlled by conventional control techniques that maintain the indoor temperature within a prescribed deadband. The latest research provides evidence that more dynamic variations of the indoor ...

2023

Thermal Conditions in Indoor Environments: Exploring the Reasoning behind Standard-Based Recommendations

Dolaana Khovalyg

Professionals in the building design and operation fields typically look at standards and guidelines as a reliable source of information and guidance with regard to procedural, contractual, and legal scope and requirements that are relevant to accountabili ...

2023

Energy, SBS symptoms, and productivity in Swiss open-space offices: Economic evaluation of standard, actual, and optimum scenarios

Cecile Anne Berquand, Dusan Licina, Dolaana Khovalyg, Arnab Chatterjee, Verena Marie Barthelmes

The fundamental aspiration of new-generation high-performing buildings is to reduce energy use while securing indoor environmental quality conducive to human health and productivity. However, existing frameworks for identifying Key Performance Indicators ( ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2023

RECA: A Multi-Task Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Recommender System for Co-Optimizing Energy, Comfort and Air Quality in Commercial Buildings

Andrew James Sonta

We present the design and implementation of RECA, a novel human-centric recommender system for co-optimizing energy consumption, comfort and air quality in commercial buildings. Existing works generally optimize these objectives separately, or by only cont ...

Association for Computing Machinery2023

DIET Controller: Dynamic Indoor Environment using Deep Reinforcement Learning

Arnab Chatterjee

Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Systems utilize much energy, accounting for 40% of total building energy use. The temperatures in buildings are commonly held within narrow limits, leading to higher energy use. Measurements from office bui ...

EPFL2023

Influence of outdoor air pollution on European residential ventilative cooling potential

Dusan Licina, Evangelos Belias

Residential ventilative cooling via natural ventilation is influenced by outdoor air pollution. However, relative to climate, outdoor air pollution is not comprehensively considered in determining the ventilative cooling potential of buildings. To assess t ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA2023

Taking a step back from glass towers facades to make them compatible with the 2050 targets

Bernard Paule, Sergi Aguacil Moreno

Skyscrapers or glass towers are an extremely common model throughout the world. In the current context of climate change and resource depletion, we need to develop new postures towards these objects, especially for existing buildings that are becoming obso ...

2023

Toward contactless human thermal monitoring: A framework for Machine Learning-based human thermo-physiology modeling augmented with computer vision

Alexandre Massoud Alahi, Dolaana Khovalyg, Mohamad Rida, Mohamed Ossama Ahmed Abdelfattah

The transition towards a human-centered indoor climate is beneficial from occupants’ thermal comfort and from an energy reduction perspective. However, achieving this goal requires the knowledge of the thermal state of individuals at the level of body part ...

2023

Human personal air pollution clouds in a naturally ventilated office during the COVID-19 pandemic

Dusan Licina, Shen Yang, Maria Viviana Gonzalez Serrano, Akila Muthalagu

Personal cloud, termed as the difference in air pollutant concentrations between breathing zone and room sites, represents the bias in approximating personal inhalation exposure that is linked to accuracy of health risk assessment. This study performed a t ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2023

Efficacy of temporal and spatial abstraction for training accurate machine learning models: A case study in smart thermostats

Rachid Guerraoui, Omid Ardakanian, Alexandre David Olivier Maurer

Smart thermostats are increasingly popular in homes and buildings as they improve occupant comfort, lower energy use in heating and cooling systems, and reduce utility bills by automatically adjusting room temperature according to measurements of their bui ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA2023

Influence of Ambient Air Pollution on Natural Ventilation Potential in Europe

Dusan Licina, Evangelos Belias

When designed and operated adequately, natural ventilation (NV) can improve the buildings' energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality. There is a plethora of factors that limit the effectiveness of NV, such as the climate, surrounding buildings, no ...

AMER SOC HEATING, REFRIGERATING AND AIR-CONDITIONING ENGS2022

Bridging the gap from test rooms to field-tests for human indoor comfort studies: A critical review of the sustainability potential of living laboratories

Dusan Licina, Mengdi Kong

Occupants play a key role in determining final building energy consumption. Empirical evidence must support occupants' modelling. Experiments on human responses to Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) are usually performed in test rooms or as in-field monito ...

ELSEVIER2022

Reaching Thermal Comfort Zone Limits for Resilient Building Operation: A Winter Case Study for Offices

Dolaana Khovalyg, Arnab Chatterjee, Verena Marie Barthelmes

A specific range of acceptable indoor thermal conditions is stipulated by building performance standards to assure minimum dissatisfaction of occupants. Thus, the operation of buildings in practice tends to follow a cautious approach by setting the indoor ...

Routledge2022

Variation in Indoor Thermal Environmental Parameters in an Open Space Office

Dolaana Khovalyg, Arnab Chatterjee, Verena Marie Barthelmes

Building energy modelling is an indispensable component of today’s design method. However, as per research findings, real-life buildings could utilize almost twice the amount of their ideal energy performance. Thus, it is important to understand the variat ...

TU Delft2022

Reinforcement Learning for proactive operation of residential energy systems by learning stochastic occupant behavior and fluctuating solar energy: Balancing comfort, hygiene and energy use

François Maréchal, Dolaana Khovalyg, Amirreza Heidari

When it comes to residential buildings, there are several stochastic parameters, such as renewable energy production, outdoor air conditions, and occupants’ behavior, that are hard to model and predict accurately, with some being unique in each specific bu ...

2022

Quality criteria for multi-domain studies in the indoor environment: Critical review towards research guidelines and recommendations

Mandana Sarey Khanie, Giorgia Chinazzo, Dolaana Khovalyg, Verena Marie Barthelmes, Matteo Favero

The perception, physiology, behavior, and performance of building occupants are influenced by multi-domain exposures: the simultaneous presence of multiple environmental stimuli, i.e., visual, thermal, acoustic, and air quality. Despite being extensive, th ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2022

Validation of spectral simulation tools in the context of ipRGC-influenced light responses of building occupants

Marilyne Andersen, Clotilde Marie A Pierson

With the growing awareness about ipRGC-influenced light (IIL) responses, design applications related to these responses are flourishing. To compare design options and optimize lighting conditions for building occupants, lighting simulations are typically u ...

2023