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Studying the thermal environment in classrooms is essential due to its impact on students' health, teaching, learning, and productivity. In the Nigerian context, there is a general lack of thermal comfort studies, and none specifically relate to secondary school settings. This study aims to investigate students' perceptions of the indoor thermal environment and to determine the optimum temperature in naturally ventilated classrooms in the tropical savanna climate. Field investigations were...

Recently, Occupant-Centric Control (OCC) strategies have gained mounting interest. Previous studies made use of OCC strategies for adjusting the operation of heating/cooling systems, improving indoor thermal comfort and governing mechanical ventilation systems. However, a very limited number of studies have applied OCC strategies to natural ventilation systems. Further, the feasibility of establishing OCC strategies for controlling indoor thermal comfort, energy use and specifically air...

Recently, Occupant-Centric Control (OCC) strategies have gained mounting interest. Previous studies made use of OCC strategies for adjusting the operation of heating/cooling systems, improving indoor thermal comfort and governing mechanical ventilation systems. However, a very limited number of studies have applied OCC strategies to natural ventilation systems. Further, the feasibility of establishing OCC strategies for controlling indoor thermal comfort, energy use and specifically air...

Climate-sensitive school buildings can enhance students’ learning performance and reduce the building’s overall energy consumption. This paper reports on a post-occupancy study of contemporary school buildings in Malaysia, assessing problems of solar heat gain. The research aims to propose retrofitting measures based on passive design principles adapted specifically for the Malaysian tropical climate to strengthen the resilience of local school buildings in a global climate emergency....

Children differ from adults in their physiology and cognitive ability. Thus, they are extremely vulnerable to classroom thermal comfort. However, very few reviews on the thermal comfort of primary school students are available. Further, children-focused surveys have not reviewed the state-of-the-art in thermal comfort prediction using machine learning (AI/ML). Consequently, there is a need for discussion on children-specific challenges in AI/ML-based prediction. This article bridges these...

The occupants' presence, activities, and behaviour can significantly impact the building's performance and energy efficiency. Currently, heating, ventilation, and airconditioning (HVAC) systems are often run based on assumed occupancy levels and fixed schedules, or manually set by occupants based on their comfort needs. However, the unpredictability and variability of occupancy patterns can lead to over/under the conditioning of space when using such approaches, affecting indoor air quality...

The occupants' presence, activities, and behaviour can significantly impact the building's performance and energy efficiency. Currently, heating, ventilation, and airconditioning (HVAC) systems are often run based on assumed occupancy levels and fixed schedules, or manually set by occupants based on their comfort needs. However, the unpredictability and variability of occupancy patterns can lead to over/under the conditioning of space when using such approaches, affecting indoor air quality...

Personal thermal comfort models are crucial for the future of human-in-the-loop HVAC control in energy-efficient buildings. Individual comfort models, compared to average population responses, can provide the personalization required for successful control. In this work, we frame the thermal preference prediction task as a multivariate, multi-class classification problem and use deep learning and time-series-based approach for thermal preference prediction. We combine l1 regularization with...

Personal thermal comfort models are crucial for the future of human-in-the-loop HVAC control in energy-efficient buildings. Individual comfort models, compared to average population responses, can provide the personalization required for successful control. In this work, we frame the thermal preference prediction task as a multivariate, multi-class classification problem and use deep learning and time-series-based approach for thermal preference prediction. We combine l1 regularization with...

This study investigated children’s perceptions and adaptive behaviors related to indoor thermal conditions of classrooms in primary schools with no air-conditioning systems during both summer and winter in Dehradun City, Uttarakhand, India. Responses were collected from 5297 school children aged 6–13 years. During the measurement periods, 100% and 94% of the samples were obtained under conditions outside an 80% thermally acceptable comfort range in winter and summer, respectively. The...

Rising temperatures are causing distress across the world, and for those most vulnerable, it is a silent killer. Information about indoor air temperature in residential dwellings is of interest for a range of reasons, such as health, thermal comfort and coping practices. However, there have been only few studies that measure indoor heat exposure, and contrast these to outdoor temperatures in rural-urban areas, of which none are in South Asia. We aim to close this knowledge gap with our...

A large part of energy consumption in homes, offices and commercial spaces is related to Heating, Ventilation and Air-conditioning (HVAC) devices. The effective parameter on the consumption of HVAC systems is internal heat gains that arise from occupants, electric equipment and lighting. In order to reduce the energy consumption of these systems, internal heat gains should be predicted accurately. Since there are few investigations performed on the prediction of internal heat gains, in this...

This research aimed to examine the thermal comfort performance of students in naturally ventilated secondary schools’ classrooms in Makassar. The analysis compared the thermal balance and the adaptive model. The study analyzed data gathered from surveys conducted at eight secondary schools and local weather stations. The data consists of the measured indoor thermal environment of 48 classrooms. The personal data, users’ perceptions, and adaptive behaviors of 1,594 students were recorded in...

Nafta is an oasis located in the governorate of Tozeur in the South of Tunisia. The unique natural and built environment it offers has been degrading due to climate change, pollution, and overexploitation. Additionally, the new residential districts are unsuitable for the desert climate of the area. Not only do they fail to provide thermal comfort, especially during the heat waves, but also they contain non-eco-friendly materials such as concrete. However, we notice that the vernacular...

This study managed to create thermal comfort conditions at three temperatures (24°C-­T24, 26°C-­T26, and 28°C-­T28) by adjusting clothing and air velocity. Thirty-­ six subjects (18 males and 18 females) were exposed to each of the three conditions for 4.5 h in a design balanced for order of presentation of conditions. During each exposure, they rated the physical environment, their comfort, the intensity of acute subclinical health symptoms, and their mental load, and they performed a...

The relation between electroencephalogram signals, thermal comfort, and cognitive performance in neutral to hot indoor environment was investigated. The experiments were carried out at four temperatures: 26ºC, 30ºC, 33ºC, and 37ºC, and two relative humidity levels: 50% and 70%. Thirty-two subjects were exposed for 175 min. The electroencephalogram signals were measured for 30 min 25 min after the onset of exposure while the recruited subjects performed neurobehavioral tests and rated their...

Educational buildings form a significant part of non-residential buildings that are of public use, and, in the case of Cyprus, this building stock tends to be less energy-efficient compared to a number of other public building typologies. Moreover, it is the purpose, frequency of use and user density of these buildings that make them a special case for study. These buildings are no longer fit for their assigned purpose as they require significant energy for heating in the winter and cooling...

We performed a survey of the types of bedroom ventilation in Danish dwellings (January–February 2020) and the associated subjective sleep quality. Five hundred and seventeen people responded. Their median age was 33 years old and 55.4% of them were males. We used an online questionnaire and collected information on the type of bedroom ventilation, bedroom airing behaviour by the respondents, the bedroom environment, building surroundings and location, and sleep disturbance caused by stuffy...