Publications related to Indoor air quality investigation before and after relocation to WELL-certified office buildings

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

Overview of the Alaskan Layered Pollution and Chemical Analysis (ALPACA) Field Experiment

Roman Pohorsky, Julia Schmale, Athanasios Nenes, Sukriti Kapur, Andrea Baccarini

The Alaskan Layered Pollution And Chemical Analysis (ALPACA) field experiment was a collaborative study designed to improve understanding of pollution sources and chemical processes during winter (cold climate and low-photochemical activity), to investigat ...

2024

Correlating long-term performance and aging behaviour of building integrated PV modules

Christophe Ballif, Alessandro Francesco Aldo Virtuani, Ebrar Özkalay

Because building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) modules are fully integrated into a building envelope, the back of the module can be exposed to little or no ventilation, resulting in increased operating temperatures. As the temperature increases, the perfo ...

Elsevier Science Sa2024

Fusing Pre-existing Knowledge and Machine Learning for Enhanced Building Thermal Modeling and Control

Loris Di Natale

Buildings play a pivotal role in the ongoing worldwide energy transition, accounting for 30% of the global energy consumption. With traditional engineering solutions reaching their limits to tackle such large-scale problems, data-driven methods and Machine ...

EPFL2024

Modeling and optimization of PCB coils for inductive power transfer systems

Xiaotong Du

The auxiliary power supply for medium voltage converters requires high insulation capability between the source and the load. Inductive power transfer technology, with an air gap between the primary and secondary coil, offers such high insulation capabilit ...

EPFL2024

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

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

Experimental study of the hydrodynamic and thermal performances of ventilated wall structures

Mohammad Rahiminejad, Dolaana Khovalyg

The presence of a ventilated air gap behind the external cladding in a building envelope is known to have a tangible contribution to the overall performance of the wall assembly. In the present study, the hydrodynamic and thermal performances of ventilated ...

2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A new chapter of healthy indoor air: antiviral air treatments

Shannon Christa David

Aerosol transmission remains a major challenge for the control of respiratory viruses. To date, prevention strategies include masks, vaccinations, physical distancing, travel restrictions, and lockdowns. Such measures are effective but come with heavy soci ...

Wiley2023

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

Optimal sensor placement for personal inhalation exposure detection in static and dynamic office environments

Dusan Licina, Seoyeon Yun

Modern health and productivity concerns related to air pollutant exposure in buildings have sparked the need for occupant-centric monitoring and ventilation control. The existing personal exposure monitoring is often restricted to stationary air quality se ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2023

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