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An output of the Open Development & Education, https://opendeved.net/

This conference paper was delivered at UKFIET 2023 (Oxford). IT was a joint presentation between Laterite, Fab Inc, and Open Development & Education, as well as FCDO.

Schoolchildren are a high-risk population, and their exposure to air pollution at school has been documented in high-income countries. As a result, school siting policies to protect children from air pollution have been established in those countries. Such policies are, however, non-existent in Africa where the air pollution problem is growing and gravely under-studied due to the lack of funding to install reliable ground-level monitoring networks and lack of air quality standards. The...

Indoor light quality is the intensity and amount of illumination of interior spaces. Technological developments have led to the utilisation of artificial natural light. Illumination is crucial in the visibility of tasks. Quality of light can influence the visual comfort and ocular health of the students. Although Kenya lacks lighting standards for schools, ISO and CIE provide international guidelines on optimal illumination for various facilities. This study was conducted on public boarding...

The current climate emergency concerns and the COVID-19 pandemic demand urgent action to maintain healthy indoor environments in energy efficient ways. Promoting good indoor environments, in particular, increasing ventilation levels, has been a prominent strategy to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 transmission indoors. However, this strategy could be detrimental to thermal comfort, particularly during the heating season in buildings located in temperate climate zones. This paper presents...

We present an approach to generate location-specific forecasts of indoor temperature (Ti) and thermal comfort and issue indoor heat warnings for occupational settings. Indoor forecasts are generated using standard outdoor weather forecasting products and an artificial neural network (ANN) trained on-site using local indoor measurements from a low-cost sensor system measuring Ti and indoor physiologically equivalent temperature (PETi). The outcomes are hourly indoor Ti and PET i forecasts....

Governments devote a large share of public budgets to construct, repair, and modernize school facilities. However, evidence on whether investments in the physical state of schools translate into better student outcomes is scant. In this study, we report the results of a large field study on the implications of poor air quality inside classrooms − a key performance measure of school mechanical ventilation systems. We continuously monitor the air quality (i.e., CO2), together with a rich set...

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...

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...

Energy Poverty (EP) is a widespread problem in Europe. EP detection is hampered by a lack of data and global metrics. Recently, innovative approaches using Artificial Intelligent (AI) techniques have been increasingly applied for the EP alleviation. In this work, studies focused on the application of AI on EP were studied. It was identified that there is not a high number of works that apply AI to fight against EP (considering this problem as a multidimensional phenomenon). Artificial Neural...

The TAIL rating scheme was developed to assess indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in offices and hotels undergoing deep renovation and was recently extended by the PredicTAIL method allowing prediction of IEQ through modeling. TAIL provides the methodology for rating the quality of the thermal, acoustic, and luminous environments, the indoor air quality, and the overall quality of the indoor environment. The present work is an extension of the use of TAIL rating scheme for school classrooms...

Higher ventilation rates were verified to have a positive impact on indoor air quality and therefore benefit sleep quality. However, how does ventilation influence bedroom air quality if the outdoor air quality is poor? Whilst ventilation helps to reduce indoor pollution it inadvertently brings outdoor pollution indoors, such as NO2, which is from vehicular emission. In this study, we collected the info of window and door status during sleep and measured carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen...

Background It is believed that poor classroom acoustics leads to lower levels of student learning and exposes teachers vocal folds to greater physical wear and tear. Objective This study sought to compare the quality of life by World Health Organization (whoqol-bref) questionnaire of 61 teachers working at schools with different acoustic conditions. Methods This paper reports on a descriptive exploratory study aimed at ascertaining the following: (1) outdoor sound pressure levels in the...

Ten healthy young adults slept one by one in a specially designed and constructed sleep capsule located in a climate chamber at two temperatures (24 °C and 28 °C) and two ventilation rates that ensured that the resulting CO2 concentrations were 800 and 1700 ppm. Subjectively rated sleep quality was reduced at 28 °C and reduced ventilation, while sleep onset latency was longer under these conditions. Sleep efficiency was lower at 28 °C. Subjectively rated fatigue and sleepiness decreased...

This paper presents a detailed analysis to optimize natural ventilation performance in educational buildings to minimize the probability of viral infection (POI) and avoid draught discomfort. A whole building energy simulation tool has been coupled with the Wells–Riley equation to predict the probability of infection and Fanger’s draught equation to estimate the draught risk for classroom environments. Several parameters have been investigated, including window opening fraction (WOF),...

This paper presents a detailed analysis to optimize natural ventilation performance in educational buildings to minimize the probability of viral infection (POI) and avoid draught discomfort. A whole building energy simulation tool has been coupled with the Wells–Riley equation to predict the probability of infection and Fanger’s draught equation to estimate the draught risk for classroom environments. Several parameters have been investigated, including window opening fraction (WOF),...

Impairment in mental functions attributed to the effects of indoor air quality and thermal conditions has received considerable attention in the past decade, particularly for educational buildings where students’ cognitive performance is essential to foster learning. This study explores the combined effects of indoor temperatures and CO2 levels as markers for ventilation rates on cognitive performance among female students (16–23 years old) in Saudi Arabia. The longitudinal experiments...

In the hot climate of Saudi Arabia, people living year-round in air-conditioned spaces are likely to develop high expectations for homogeneity and cool temperatures, becoming potentially more sensitive if thermal conditions deviate from the comfort zone they expect. This paper presents the results from a field intervention investigating the association between participants’ thermal sensations with cognitive performance in a female university in Saudi Arabia. The climatic context plays a key...

The article seeks to support policy-makers in considering the role of education in response to the climate–environment emergency. It argues for a holistic framing of education's response, incorporating both climate and environment. While recognizing the imperative of global action, it emphasizes the need for national/local education systems approaches that reflect the distinct and localized challenges and responsibilities pertinent to high-income countries (HICs) and low- and lower-middle...