Short-term Measurements of Indoor Environmental Quality in Selected Offices – Case Study

Author(s):  
Ludmila Meciarova ◽  
Silvia Vilcekova ◽  
Eva Kridlova Burdova ◽  
Ilija Zoran Apostoloski ◽  
Danica Kosicanova

Decent quality of indoor air is important for health and wellbeing of building users. We live, work and study in indoors of various types of buildings. Often people are exposed to pollutants at higher concentrations than these that occur out-doors. Continual investigation of indoor air quality is needed for ensuring comfort and healthy environment. Measuring and analysis of occurrence of physical, chemical and biological factors is the first step for suggestion of optimization measures. Inside school buildings there are often inadequate indoor climate conditions such as thermal comfort parame-ters or ventilation. The aim of this study was determination of indoor environmental quality in selected offices in the building of elementary school in Slovakia. The values of operative temperature were not within the optimum range of values for the warm period of the year in one of the monitored offices. The intensity of illumination was lower in the two offices. Low levels of particulate matters were measured except the one office where permissible value was exceeded by 7.6%.

2015 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Farid-Wajdi Akashah ◽  
Azlan Shah Ali ◽  
Siti Fatunah Mohd Zahari

POE is important to evaluate comfort level and satisfaction of building occupants because it indicates their productivity, health, and wellbeing. It is absolutely necessary to ensure building occupants are comfortable and satisfied about buildings’ indoor environmental quality (IEQ). Productivity may be interrupted due to building occupants’ discomfort, which affect their work performance. This study presents the how comfort and satisfaction affects the occupants’ productivity in conventional-designed buildings. Five office buildings located in University of Malaya were selected as the case studies. 278 questionnaires feedbacks found to be useful to form a database on the IEQ. Data obtained were analyzed using SPSS software. The findings shows that majority of the respondents in conventional-designed building were slightly comfortable and satisfied about their IEQ comfort level which were indoor air quality, thermal, lighting, and noise comforts. Although, the design of conventional buildings did not taking into account on sustainability designing, it still functionally well and provided comfort which leads to increasing of employees productivity. The associative test showed significant correlation between illness symptom and IEQ components. Admin buildings had more noticeable illness symptoms in contrast with Faculty buildings. It could be concluded that building occupants’ productivity were least affected by the conventional-design building.  


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (16) ◽  
pp. 6453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catarina Ribeiro ◽  
Nuno M. M. Ramos ◽  
Inês Flores-Colen

Balconies are an ancient architectural archetype that are being increasingly considered in multi-family buildings of high-density cities. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of the impacts of balcony types on the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and energy consumption of dwellings. Of the reviewed studies, 69% were published during the last decade, making it evident that awareness of the positive impact of balcony spaces is continuously increasing. The literature review allowed us to identify three balcony spaces according to their morphology and their boundary system: open balcony (OB), glazed balcony (GB), and eliminate balcony (EB). It was concluded that these balcony types produce relevant impacts in four factors that contribute to the indoor environmental quality: thermal comfort, indoor air quality, visual comfort, and acoustic comfort. Practical design recommendations and constraints were provided according to distinct climatic conditions and building technologies. This review also explored the assessment methodologies used for the optimization of the balconies on the design process. The literature highlighted the lack of a comprehensive study about the impact of balconies in mild and Mediterranean climates, as well as the knowledge limitations concerning the balance between the impacts on IEQ factors.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 2995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mushk Bughio ◽  
Thorsten Schuetze ◽  
Waqas Ahmed Mahar

Poor Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) adversely affects the performance and health of building users. Building users are an important source of information regarding IEQ and its influence on users’ wellbeing and productivity. This paper discusses the analysis and evaluation of IEQ in lecture halls of two public Architectural Campus Buildings (ACB) in Karachi, Pakistan. The method of this research is divided into three parts: (i) An analysis of local climate conditions, (ii) An on-site survey of two existing ACBs to analyze indoor environmental conditions. and (iii) The analysis of users’ satisfaction using a questionnaire survey. The research results showed that users are dissatisfied with existing hot and humid indoor environment conditions caused by interactions of local outdoor climate conditions, the building’s architecture, and inadequate ventilation within the building. The findings revealed that Karachi has 41.3% comfort hours with the warm sub-humid season to be the most comfortable season having 80.56% comfort hours. IEQ analysis unveiled that airflow in ACB1 is low, whereas, high airflow is observed in ACB2. The findings of this research unveiled that cross-ventilation by the adapted placement of openings, improved external shading devices, and provision of increased vegetation are required in both ACBs to achieve a more comfortable IEQ.


2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 813-827 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Laskari ◽  
Stavroula Karatasou ◽  
Mat Santamouris

This paper presents the methodology for the calculation of an indoor environmental quality indicator for residential buildings. The ‘Dwelling Environmental Quality Index’ has been developed with the purpose of assisting both households and property managers to identify potential problems with the indoor environment whilst ensuring that indoor environmental quality is not compromised in favour of energy saving. Based on the combined effect of three simple and commonly measured indoor environmental parameters – air temperature, relative humidity and CO2 concentrations; the index reflects in a single value the quality of indoor environmental conditions for the monitored period, in compliance with the European standard EN15251:2007. The application of the Dwelling Environmental Quality Index in single dwellings and in building blocks is demonstrated. The usability of the index as a communication and management tool for individual households and property managers is also demonstrated.


2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 492-496 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yufan Zhang ◽  
Peter Barrett ◽  
Fay Davies ◽  
Lucinda Barrett

2015 ◽  
Vol 75 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ang Qiu Mei ◽  
Md Azree Othuman Mydin

This study was done to investigate the relationship between indoor environmental quality and prevalence of Sick Building Syndrome in six small offices inPenangIsland. Indoor environmental quality measurement was conducted according to relevant standards. There are totally Sixty workers were selected to participate in an electronic questionnaire survey. Questionnaire was used to record the comfort level of respondents in the case studies and level of sick building syndrome faced by respondents. Through indoor environmental quality measurement, it is found that most of the offices facing the lighting and noise problem. The result from the questionnaire shows that in overall, the occupants satisfy with their working environment in term of indoor environmental quality although the result also shows the opinions of occupants on dissatisfaction on certain indoor environmental parameter according to case study. The study also found that most of the occupants feel drowsy and fatigue when they work within the offices. Besides, due to the difference of the indoor environmental quality of the buildings, the occupants are suffered from different symptoms of the sick building syndrome.


Author(s):  
Ibrahim Al-Sulaihi ◽  
Khalid Al-Gahtani ◽  
Abdullah Alsugair ◽  
Ibrahim Tijani

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 14067
Author(s):  
Jong-Won Lee ◽  
Deuk-Woo Kim ◽  
Seung-Eon Lee ◽  
Jae-Weon Jeong

Comprehensively monitoring indoor environmental quality (IEQ) parameters and their dynamic relations is essential to ensure improved productivity and a healthy environment for building occupants. Although IEQ significantly influences working efficiency, studies addressing this aspect with researchers in institutes as the focal point are limited. Thus, this study employed drill-down analyses, such as floor-by-floor and building-by-building examinations and used an occupant IEQ survey approach to evaluate working conditions in research buildings. This study systematically and objectively assessed IEQ using the Korea building occupant survey system. The results indicate that acoustic qualities affect the work productivity and satisfaction of the building occupants. The floor-by-floor analysis is necessary to identify IEQ factors and the reasons for the satisfaction of occupants. Additionally, it is important to improve the user-friendliness of the system, implement frequent survey distribution systems, and empirically analyze data associations among building, spatial, and demographical characteristics.


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