Abstract
This paper presents a summary of recent CIBSE guidance on health and wellbeing in buildings, including how to define indoor environmental criteria. In a rapidly-evolving field, it also summarises key areas of current research and development, how to evaluate such studies, and what to look out for when reviewing emerging products. The paper focuses on indoor air quality, thermal comfort and humidity, but many of its principles are valid for other aspects of indoor environments. Overall, CIBSE guidance advocates for source control, the precautionary principle, and monitoring of building performance in order to avoid unintended consequences. Key themes of active research, with potential for significant improvements to health and comfort, include: • improving our understanding of conditions best suited to a range of populations (e.g. the elderly, children); • assessing the impact of, and designing for, exposure to a range of environmental stressors. This would be an evolution from current guidelines which tend to respond to one factor alone (e.g. responding to combined excessive heat and noise, rather than to one or the other); • building our knowledge of impacts and solutions in the housing retrofit sector, considering jointly the effects on energy consumption, comfort, indoor air quality and humidity.
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Recommended Citation
Godefroy, Julie and Mylona, Anastasia
(2019)
"Indoor Air Quality, Humidity and Thermal Conditions: CIBSE Review of Recent Research and Guidance in Criteria and Solutions,"
SDAR* Journal of Sustainable Design & Applied Research:
Vol. 7:
Iss.
1, Article 3.
doi:https://doi.org/10.21427/fns6-a780
Available at:
https://arrow.tudublin.ie/sdar/vol7/iss1/3
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21427/fns6-a780