The popularity of decoration and refurbishment of rental apartments in China may give rise to indoor VOC levels, posing health threats to tenants. A questionnaire was conducted on the renovation characteristics and tenant information of rental apartments in Beijing. The study selected 143 rental bedrooms to study the characteristics of HCHO and BTX (benzene, toluene and xylene) and assessed the health

This paper presents an experimental research study intended to evaluate daylight perception in work environments. The current metrics for assessing daylight in work environments involve quantifying daylight and do not provide insight into the actual appearance of the space, thus overlooking the qualitative aspects of light and their effect on occupants. Conceptual content cognitive mapping (3CM), a

This study investigated, using validated computational fluid dynamics techniques, the potential infection risks to medical staff when performing endotracheal intubation in the negative pressure isolation ward during treatment of COVID-19 patients. The research first simulated the airflow distribution in negative pressure isolation ward and then examined the potential infection risks to medical staff

Urban residents are suffering from serious thermal stress resulting from urban heat island and global warming. Investigators have explored several methods to address this issue. Vegetation, especially trees, were found to play a vital part in urban environments. It produces a cooling effect by reducing temperature and radiation levels. To find thermal performances of trees in detail, this study physically

As the most densely populated area, a city is an open and complex giant system. This has been widely agreed by scientists.1–3 ‘System’ is a complex entirety formed by a group of interacting or interdependent parts. Each system is divided by its spatial and temporal boundaries, influenced by its surrounding environment, described by its structure and purpose and reflected in its function.4 The open

Hygroscopic material can moderate the indoor humidity variation due to its moisture buffering effect. This effect would change when used as interior finish mainly due to air exchange and wall moisture transfer. The author focused on clarifying the extent of the wall'’s influence on indoor moisture buffering and building humidity environment. A room model was established and the situation of no wall

In recent years, several epidemics by transmissible respiratory viruses have emerged, especially pandemics caused by coronaviruses. The most significant public health emergency may be the COVID-19 pandemic. Identifying the transmission of infectious disease plays an important role in healthcare for protecting and implementing effective measures for public health. However, studies on SARS-CoV-2 transmission

As a public building for exercises and entertainments, gymnasiums play an important role in people's daily life. In regions with hot-humid climate, thermal sensation in gymnasiums is directly related to the human health as well as energy consumption. However, little can be found in the systematic evaluation system reported for thermal sensation of athletes in gymnasium in hot-humid climate regions;

Fangcang shelter hospitals – erected by installing medical equipment in large public venues – played an essential role during the COVID-19 pandemic in China. Their isolation, interior density and patients' mutual exposure deviate from normal living conditions, necessitating the study on the adaptation, social organisation and emotional response of patients. For this purpose, we conducted spatial analysis

To investigate the role of different pattern of ambient air pollutants exposure during early life on childhood pneumonia, we conducted a retrospective cohort study of 3226 preschool children aged three to six years in Shenzhen, China during 2015 to 2016. Each child's exposure to three main air pollutants (PM10, SO2 and NO2) was calculated by the inverse distance weighted method. Multiple logistic regression

Colour of interior surfaces has to be considered in order to provide optimal visual and non-visual performance. Colour selection is often related to the occupant's colour preferences. First part of the presented study was a questionnaire-based cross-sectional study among the employees of the University of Ljubljana conducted in December 2019 in order to identify possible association between personal

Most existing models and standards for volatile organic compounds emission assume that contaminants are uniform in the testing devices. In this study, a three-dimensional transient numerical model was proposed to simulate the mass transport process based on a full-scale test chamber with a mixing fan, and the airflow field and contaminants concentration distribution were obtained within the chamber

Solar radiation intensity affects both subjective reactions and physiological functions, especially for people who exercise heavily. Field experiments including a questionnaire survey at various ambient temperatures were performed; outdoor activities under shading (irradiance I = 50 ± 20 W/m2) and non-shading (I = 700 ± 50 W/m2) conditions during summer in Xi'an were recorded. The results of questionnaires

The outdoor physical environments of many old communities are unable to meet modern living requirements and require improvement urgently. This is especially true for communities in regions with extremely hot summers and cold winters, which may cause additional difficulties. This study used measurements and questionnaire data to investigate outdoor environment (the thermal, sound, light environments

In the human–land system, a river basin is the geographical unit most commonly imprinted by human activities,1 leading this highly variable environment to have complex human–land relationships.2 Most of the world’s civilisations have been cultivated by rivers or originated from river basin areas,3 allowing human settlements and rivers to interact, and thereby developing co-evolutionary processes and

Accurate and reliable indoor pollutant concentration prediction is essential to solve the time-lag problem of indoor air quality control systems. Thus, the representation of time in pollutant forecasting models is very important. One approach is to introduce an Elman neural network using a direct inference strategy into the time series forecast of indoor pollutant concentration. In this study, measurements

A neuro-human thermal model was optimized to increase the prediction accuracy of the physiological variables of a group of 15 healthy male students exposed to transient environmental conditions. The effect of both the passive and active systems parameters was studied using a sensitivity analysis, and the parameters that had the most influence on the neuro-human thermal model outputs were established

Fuel poverty affects around 34% of European homes, representing a considerable burden to society and healthcare systems. This pilot study assesses the impact of an intervention to install a new first time central heating system in order to reduce fuel poverty on household satisfaction with indoor temperatures/environment, ability to pay bills and mental well-being. In Cornwall, 183 households received

Background In Ethiopia, there is not enough information about indoor air bacterial pollution. Therefore, this study aimed to determine bacterial indoor air pollution and its associated risk factors among residences of Gondar town. Methods A cross-sectional survey of indoor air pollution was conducted on 259 selected houses from February to May 2019. Sociodemographic and housing characteristics were

The impact of human body heat dissipation on the containment of a fume hood was conducted via experiments and numerical model. The experiments evaluated hood face velocity and the temperature around the mannequin; the results validated the simulation. The numerical model was based on the governing equations of fluid flow via the finite volume method. The face velocities (0.3–0.9 m·s−1) and temperature

At present, more than 55% of the world's population lives in cities, and this is expected to rise to 68% by 2050, with nearly 90% of the increase in the urban population occurring in Asia and Africa, especially for India and China.1 Thanks to the rapid urbanization, the proportion of China's urban population has increased from 17.92% in 1978 to 58.5% in 2017, which is expected to exceed 60% in 2020

The concentration of 10 potentially toxic heavy metals in indoor dust from homes in Neyshabur was investigated. The concentrations of heavy metals in indoor dust from homes ranged from 28.1 to 190.4 µg g−1 for Cr, 24.7 to 162.2 µg g−1 for Ni, 43.8 to 640.4 µg g−1 for Cu, 13.7 to 5,345.7 µg g−1 for Pb, 135.5 to 1,033.0 µg g−1 for Mn, 105.8 to 2,958.0 µg g−1 for Zn, 6,288.0 to 32759.8 µg g−1 for Fe,

Radiation is an important phenomenon as it is used in a variety of different fields. However, its possible hazardous effect should be taken into account and it should be shielded. As the concrete is a widely used construction material, the mechanical and radiation shielding properties of concretes containing boron-bearing aggregate additives have been studied. The results show that the addition of

The present study presents a three-step methodology to determine the environmental satisfaction levels of the elderly individuals in nursing home gardens. The first step comprised the selection of seven nursing homes in five provinces in the Eastern Black Sea region in Turkey. In the second step, 130 participants were selected among the residents of these seven nursing homes via random sampling. In

Naturally ventilated buildings play a vital role in mitigating climate change since they produce lower CO2 emissions compared to mechanically ventilated alternatives. Also, occupants have better experiences in naturally ventilated buildings than in mechanically ventilated buildings. However, the application of natural ventilation design is often hindered by extreme weather conditions. To cope with

Buildings account for 34% of world energy consumption and about half of electricity consumption. The nearly/Net Zero Energy Building (nZEB/NZEB) concepts are regarded as solutions for minimizing this problem. The countries of Southern Europe, which included the nZEB concept recently in their regulatory requirements, have both heating and cooling needs, which adds complexity to the problem. Brazil may

In traditional air-conditioning system, low-temperature chilled water is used to cool air. Generally, the temperature difference between air to be operated and the chilled water is high, and majority of air can be operated using water at higher temperatures. Therefore, this paper proposes the concept of grade of load and the method of dividing cooling/heating load into different grades. A traditional

The polyvinylidene fluoride hollow fibre membrane air dehumidification tests were carried out between the liquid desiccant solutions and the wet air. Three liquid desiccant solutions of LiBr solution (50%), LiCl solution (35%) and CaCl2 solution (40%) were tested under different wet air conditions. The results showed that all the membrane dehumidification processes were stable. The air moisture content

Radium, which is naturally present in many building materials, decays to the radioactive gas radon, which is exhaled from the surface of concrete block and is a major source of human exposure to radioactivity. In this study, an experimental evaluation of radon exhalation was conducted on a concrete block covered with mortar and acrylic render. Factors such as sand aggregates content and water content

Cool roofs with higher solar reflectance and emittance can effectively reduce building energy consumption. However, it is still limited to use at night on account of the development of roof materials during the past decades. The newly proposed metamaterial-based cool roof (MCR) greatly improves the possibility of the radiative cooling in the daytime. To study the influence of MCR on the energy consumption

Novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is spreading rapidly all over the world with over 23 million infected near the end of August 2020. There are also asymptomatic patients (APs) who are difficult to identify, but they are infectious and believed to be one of the transmission sources. No specific medicine, no vaccine and even no reliable quick identification tests on SARS-CoV-2

Carbon dioxide is the largest component of the human footprint and one of the major components of all greenhouse gases. The expected increase in population will lead to growth in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The building industry has the highest potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, buildings should become not only efficient consumers but also energy producers

The outbreak of pneumonia caused by 2019 Novel Coronavirus arises significant concern for virus transmission and control. The control of the indoor environment or public-enclosed environment is crucial to reduce the risk of infection. Heating, ventilation, air-conditioning (HVAC) systems are used to create a healthy, thermal-comfort indoor environments. Thus, the rational use of HVAC systems is of

The purpose of this article is to examine inclusive access criteria and explore the significance of post-occupancy evaluation (POE) for establishing and sustaining social inclusion in urban centres. Since the post-occupancy evaluation research framework was drawn on for appraising urban open space's accessibility and usability for people with and without physical disabilities, the POE methodology could

In Portugal, residential buildings commonly have their ventilation strategy changed after commissioning. This occurs due to the building managers' willingness to reduce shared costs with the electricity needed for fan operation. However, this option is not technically supported, and the effects of such a strategy on indoor air quality-related to human pollutants are yet to be quantified. CO2 was monitored

The transportation of influenza virus in a group of buildings under the condition of natural wind field was studied. The curves of natural wind power spectrum and the velocity field with respect to time were simulated by the improved weighted amplitude wave superposition with fast Fourier transform. According to Davenport spectrum, the approximation function of wind velocity field with respect to time

The acoustic environment in an urban dwelling is a key factor in human health, especially in megacities, where there are high levels of traffic noise. This study investigated the effects of various socio-economic indicators (gender, age, roadside residence, average daily time at home) on the subjective evaluation of residential acoustic environments, employing a series of questionnaire surveys and

This study investigated the effect of airflow distance from a personalized ventilation (PV) system on the personal exposure of a PV user to exhaled droplets from different orientations. Constant and dynamic airflow from the PV system was studied. A PV system was designed to produce both constant and dynamic airflows with different periods. Thermal manikins were used to simulate a healthy person (HP)

This special issue, ‘Building Environmental Control for the Wellbeing of Occupants’ was initiated in response to the increasing demand for a better environmental control for the wellbeing of occupants, and in consideration of the government policy1 and the introduction of Chinese standards on ventilation for environmental control of indoor environments, which have been reviewed.2 The environmental

Indoor corrosion inside electric boxes is important for the reliability of electric and electronic instruments. A parallel evaluation of indoor/outdoor atmospheric corrosion of steel, pollutants and meteorological parameters was made at two sites, i.e. a rural site and a coastal site of the Tabasco State, Mexico. Two exposure conditions were evaluated: outdoors and inside electric boxes. Very low levels

Computational fluid dynamics have been used to numerically study the particle diffusion and deposition in a residential kitchen under several ventilation modes. First, combining the renormalized group turbulent model with cooking release conditions, the airflow field in a kitchen was simulated and its airflow characteristics were analysed. Second, the drift flux model was adopted to predict the spatial

The water tank is most commonly a crucial energy storage device of a solar heating system. However, few existing studies have focused on the quantitative analysis of the heat discharge process of a square water tank. In this paper, a multi-units water tank with phase change material (MWT-PCM) was proposed. The dynamic heat discharge performances of the MWT-PCM and the conventional water tank both with

Radiant system has been increasingly applied in buildings due to its good thermal comfort and energy-saving potential. In this research, a simplified predicted mean vote (PMV) model and sensible cooling load equation were proposed based on human thermal comfort. Simulations were carried out using Airpak to explore relationships among thermal comfort characteristics, design and operation parameters

This study was to explore gender differences in response to subjective comfortable thermal environment by performing human experiments in summer. A total of six discontinuous conditions for self-regulating ambient temperature were designed with five males and five females. Sleep onset latency and slow wave sleep, from the physiological indices of electroencephalograph, electromyography and electrooculography

Local ductwork components, such as shunt T-elbows, generate aerodynamic noise in ventilation and air-conditioning systems where turbulent air flow dissipates pulsation. The noise generated by airflow propagates along the ductwork to the end that terminates into a room. The incident acoustic energy may affect the working efficiency and health of the occupants. In this study, computational fluid dynamics

Open spaces in Hong Kong are in short supply and they are often underused due to the adverse climate, especially in hot and humid summer. This is a missed opportunity that can be otherwise realized to promote health and social interactions for local communities. The high density urban environment makes the condition worse by raising the urban heat island effect and leaving planners with fewer mitigation

The hybrid philosophy behind the mixed-mode (MM) strategy aims at achieving energy-efficient buildings and sustainable development. A performance-based open-plan office design facilitates the handling of multiple design parameters to identify optimal design solutions for effective MM offices. This research presents a method of open-plan office design for an improved natural ventilation potential and

Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) could influences employees' satisfaction and performance in office buildings. Previous research have suggested that factors such as gender, age, proximity from a window could influence employees' perceived satisfaction with IEQ. This study as a part of an ongoing research attempts to investigate the impact of workspace location on employees' satisfaction with IEQ

Several studies reported that the long-term thermal history of the human body affects its thermal comfort and preferences. We conducted a tropical field study in Sanya city, China; 1512 questionnaires were collected from tourists. The tourists had five thermal histories associated with five different climate regions (cold, severely cold, hot summer, cold winter, hot summer and warm winter and temperate

Accessibility is a critical interior design consideration that increases performance level and allows older adults to be independent and physically active in their daily activities. This study used a case study to present a new method of combining ageing simulation with personas through importance-performance analysis (IPA) and supporting the basic activities of daily living (BADL). This study developed

The heat radiation in a residential kitchen was simulated by CFD (Computational-fluid-dynamics) to evaluate the cooling by a radiant cooling ceiling panel and pollution dispersion by the range hood and the air extraction system. The kitchen has a 2-hobs stove and a fume hood for removing waste heat and fumes. The simulation was validated by measurements in a domestic kitchen in a home in Changsha,

For affordance-based design, which is especially lacking in the architecture field, this study investigates the relationships between affordances and interior elements in the built environment by understanding intrinsic affordances by users. The ethnographic case study was conducted by unobtrusively observing participant behaviours during given tasks using video recordings, voice recordings and photographs

In this research, real-time changes in dust concentration were monitored at a typical grinding and sealing workshop during actual operation. Results indicated that particle size was between 10.0 and 50.0 µm, and the most abundant elements were Si and Al. The average daily dust exposure value (ADD) was taken as basis when performing the occupational risk assessment. The largest ADD values for the workshop

Particle deposition and penetration in buildings has been widely studied, but the effect of indoor characteristics merits further investigation, so improved experimental methods may be needed. The present study measured indoor and outdoor concentrations of PM2.5 and estimated PM2.5 deposition rates and penetration factors under a variety of different indoor situations, with a novel method (blower-door

Association between home environment and childhood asthma and allergies among preschool children in subtropical South China is unclear. We investigated doctor-diagnosed asthma, eczema and allergic rhinitis (AR) in preschool children due to the exposure to indoor dampness and residential environment. One thousand nine hundred forty-six children (3–6 years) from 22 kindergartens in Foshan participated

Detections of different thermal problems resort to approaches that utilize different indices, respectively. From an engineering viewpoint, they are neither flexible in detecting multiple thermal problems nor flexible in dealing with new concerned thermal problems. This article proposes a multiple-conformance approach to requirements that modelled by hybrid automata for flexibly detecting temperature

Building natural ventilation can effectively prevent the building from overheating and eliminate indoor pollutants, including viral aerosols and volatile organic compounds, without consuming energy. Natural ventilation by wind force is influenced by many factors, making it difficult to calculate accurately. This increases the complexity of designing natural ventilation systems. In this study, we use

Particles emitted from the kitchen have been proven as one of the major indoor particulate pollutants which could pose serious risk on human health. Thus, it is critical to study the migration of kitchen particles and the impact of kitchen particles on non-kitchen zones. Since Chinese domestic kitchens are equipped with exhaust hoods, the capture efficiency of an exhaust hood in real residence was

Despite the existence of plentiful studies on how plants can positively affect human wellbeing, few have focused on the potential effects of flower colours on stressed people. The present study was designed to illustrate the psychophysiological relaxation impacts of seeing purple and blue hydrangea flowers among finance workers. Thirty employees were asked to view purple, blue flowers or an empty table

The global pandemic of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) necessitated the rapid construction of field hospitals as the main strategies to control the detrimental effects of the outbreak. Little is known about the extent of the environmental contamination of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in an urgently field hospital. A total of 66 surface samples were randomly collected