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Environmental Assessment of Occupied Buildings Facing Future Challenges
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Environmental Assessment of Occupied Buildings Facing Future Challenges

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Green Building".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (26 March 2023) | Viewed by 7694

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Rocío Escandón Ramírez

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Architectural Constructions I, University of Seville, 41012 Seville, Spain
Interests: energy efficiency; thermal comfort; energy retrofitting; social housing; energy simulation; climate change
Dr. Alicia Alonso Carrillo

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Architectural Constructions I, University of Seville, 41012 Seville, Spain
Interests: energy efficiency; hygrothermal and acoustic comfort; IAQ; architectural acoustics; virtual acoustics; cultural heritage

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The retrofitting of the existing building stock is a priority for current energy policies that aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. Until recently, the main challenge of retrofitting strategies was to face the consequences of progressive climate change. However, the health crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to include users’ well-being as a priority. Due to this pandemic, the use of homes has been intensified and air quality requirements in schools, offices, and public buildings are in the spotlight. Is the building stock qualified to be comfortable and healthy for users under these new challenges?

Retrofitting proposals must necessarily be linked to indoor environmental quality (IEQ), also taking into account future climate emergency conditions. It is essential to previously characterize the environmental and energy behavior of the building stock under real conditions of use. These use patterns should meet the new requirements derived from health crisis (homes become working spaces, schools increase the need for air renewal, etc.). We are now more aware that deficiencies in indoor air quality, thermal comfort, or lighting conditions become health risk factors. Therefore, the quantitative diagnosis of these deficiencies is essential for decision-making in renovation procedures.

This Special Issue of Sustainability focuses on, but is not limited to, evaluating the environmental behavior of existing buildings under real conditions in order to propose measures to improve their energy efficiency and IEQ, facing future health and climatic challenges. Therefore, this Issue aims to collect research works related to the building monitoring of occupied buildings in order to avoid performance gap, user behavior, adaptive thermal comfort, the effects of climate change on the built environment, the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on environmental comfort and IAQ, and retrofitting proposals for IEQ improvement.

Dr. Rocío Escandón Ramírez
Dr. Alicia Alonso Carrillo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • indoor environmental quality
  • climate change
  • COVID-19 pandemic
  • building retrofitting
  • ventilation
  • building monitoring
  • occupant comfort
  • healthy buildings
  • user behavior building-in-use evaluation

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

25 pages, 6995 KiB  
Article
Estimation of Natural Ventilation Rates in an Office Room with 145 mm-Diameter Circular Openings Using the Occupant-Generated Tracer-Gas Method
by Hyeonji Seol, Daniel Arztmann, Naree Kim and Alvaro Balderrama
Sustainability 2023, 15(13), 9892; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15139892 - 21 Jun 2023
Viewed by 1118
Abstract
Natural ventilation in a building is an effective way to achieve acceptable indoor air quality. Ventilation dilutes contaminants such as bioeffluents generated by occupants, substances emitted from building materials, and the water vapor generated by occupants’ activities. In a building that requires heating [...] Read more.
Natural ventilation in a building is an effective way to achieve acceptable indoor air quality. Ventilation dilutes contaminants such as bioeffluents generated by occupants, substances emitted from building materials, and the water vapor generated by occupants’ activities. In a building that requires heating and cooling, adequate ventilation is crucial to minimize energy consumption while maintaining healthy indoor air quality. However, measuring the actual magnitude of the natural ventilation rate, including infiltration through the building envelope and airflow through the building openings, is not always feasible. Although international and national standards suggested the required ventilation rates to maintain acceptable indoor air quality in buildings, they did not offer action plans to achieve or evaluate those design ventilation rates in buildings in use. In this study, the occupant-generated carbon dioxide (CO2) tracer gas decay method was applied to estimate the ventilation rates in an office room in Seoul, South Korea, from summer to winter. Using the method, real-time ventilation rates can be calculated by monitoring indoor and outdoor CO2 concentrations without injecting a tracer gas. For natural ventilation in the test room, 145 mm-diameter circular openings on the fixed glass were used. As a result, first, the indoor CO2 concentrations were used as an indicator to evaluate how much the indoor air quality deteriorated when all the windows were closed in an occupied office room compared to the international standards for indoor air quality. Moreover, we found out that the estimated ventilation rates varied depending on various environmental conditions, even with the same openings for natural ventilation. Considering the indoor and outdoor temperature differences and outdoor wind speeds as the main factors influencing the ventilation rates, we analyzed how they affected the ventilation rates in the different seasons of South Korea. When the wind speeds were calm, less than 2 m/s, the temperature difference played as a factor that influenced the estimated ventilation rates. On the other hand, when the temperature differences were low, less than 3 °C, the wind speed was the primary factor. This study raises awareness about the risk of poor indoor air quality in office rooms that could lead to health problems or unpleasant working environments. This study presents an example of estimating the ventilation rates in an existing building. By using the presented method, the ventilation rate in an existing building can be simply estimated while using the building as usual, and appropriate ventilation strategies for the building can be determined to maintain the desired indoor air quality. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environmental Assessment of Occupied Buildings Facing Future Challenges)
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25 pages, 2487 KiB  
Article
Occupants’ Perceptions of Comfort, Control, and Adaptation in Colonial Revival Style Residences
by Timothy O. Adekunle
Sustainability 2023, 15(3), 1932; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15031932 - 19 Jan 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 985
Abstract
This study examines occupants’ perceptions of comfort, control, and adaptation in Colonial Revival style residences in the “Building America Climate” cold region of the United States. The research considered these buildings due to their attractiveness and availability in the study area. The research [...] Read more.
This study examines occupants’ perceptions of comfort, control, and adaptation in Colonial Revival style residences in the “Building America Climate” cold region of the United States. The research considered these buildings due to their attractiveness and availability in the study area. The research intends to address the following question—Do occupants’ perceptions of comfort significantly impact their perceptions of control and adaptation within the buildings? This study utilized indoor monitoring of variables in the summer, thermal comfort surveys (110 respondents), walk-throughs, observations, and informal interviews to collect data for analysis. The residents that perceived higher air movement and humidity also use control more often and are more often satisfied with the level of control. The differences between the mean neutral temperatures were within the range of 2.2 °C. On a seven-point scale, the mean thermal sensation votes (TSV) and thermal comfort (TC) were 3.25 and 5.05, respectively. The study revealed higher perceptions of the thermal environment among residents who spent longer hours in the buildings than those that spent fewer hours within the residences. The research implies that while there are limited options for control, the residents who spent longer hours in the buildings perceived themselves to be more comfortable and to be able to adapt better using available adaptive measures than those who spent fewer hours in the residences. The study notes that, as people migrate from one thermal environment to another, their adaptation level may change depending on certain factors, including the adaptive measures available to them. The research recommends the integration of transitional smart devices (such as remotely controlled thermostats, etc.), including control for the residents who spent fewer hours in those buildings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environmental Assessment of Occupied Buildings Facing Future Challenges)
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19 pages, 6992 KiB  
Article
Assessment of Outdoor Design Conditions on the Energy Performance of Cooling Systems in Future Climate Scenarios—A Case Study over Three Cities of Texas, Unites States
by Alireza Karimi, You Joung Kim, Negar Mohammad Zadeh, Antonio García-Martínez, Shahram Delfani, Robert D. Brown, David Moreno-Rangel and Pir Mohammad
Sustainability 2022, 14(22), 14848; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142214848 - 10 Nov 2022
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 1872
Abstract
The excessive use of energy in buildings due to increased populations and economic development leads to more greenhouse gas emissions, which affect climate change and global warming. Changes in prevailing outdoor weather conditions significantly affect the energy systems of buildings through increased cooling [...] Read more.
The excessive use of energy in buildings due to increased populations and economic development leads to more greenhouse gas emissions, which affect climate change and global warming. Changes in prevailing outdoor weather conditions significantly affect the energy systems of buildings through increased cooling and decreased heating. In this paper, 30 years of data of dry and wet bulb temperatures (1990–2020) with a time interval of 3 h were considered in order to estimate the climatic outdoor design conditions in the cities of Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio in the state of Texas. The results suggest that the dry bulb temperature (DBT) had significantly higher increases in Dallas–Fort Worth (2.37 °C) than the wet bulb temperature (WBT) in Houston (4.1 °C) during the study period. Furthermore, this study analyzed the effects of climate change on cooling degree hours (CDH) and heating degree hours (HDH) and the results suggest the most significant drop in HDH in Dallas–Fort Worth with a maximum CDH fluctuation as compared to other two cities. The effect of climate change on the performance of cooling systems is also investigated in this study via direct evaporative coolers (DECs) and direct-indirect evaporative coolers (IDEC), which do not perform well in the selected cities. In contrast, absorption system (Abs) and vapor compression (VC) systems show an increase in the number of additional loads. The second part of this study is related to the future projection using the ARIMA model, which suggests that DBT would rise significantly in Houston (from 37.18 °C to 37.56 °C) and Dallas–Fort Worth (39.1 °C to 39.57 °C) while diminishing in San Antonio (from 34.81 °C to 33.95 °C) from 2020 to 2030. In contrast, WBT will experience an upward trend in Houston (from 36.06 °C to 37.71 °C) and Dallas–Fort Worth (from 31.32 °C to 31.38 °C) and a downward trend in San Antonio (from 32.43 °C to 31.97 °C) during 2020–2030. Additionally, the future performance prediction of Abs and VC systems is also performed, which reveals that the amount of additional load required is significantly higher in 2030 compared to 2020 and is more prominent in Houston. Conversely, amount of additional load required for cooling systems in San Antonio shows a decreasing trend in 2030. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environmental Assessment of Occupied Buildings Facing Future Challenges)
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19 pages, 5455 KiB  
Article
Analysis of the Energy Efficiency of Le Corbusier’s Dwellings: The Cité Frugès, an Opportunity to Reuse Garden Cities Designed for Healthy and Working Life
by Ángel Benigno González-Avilés, Carlos Pérez-Carramiñana, Antonio Galiano-Garrigós, Fernando Ibarra-Coves and Claudia Lozano-Romero
Sustainability 2022, 14(8), 4537; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14084537 - 11 Apr 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2777
Abstract
This paper looks at the energy efficiency of the Cité Frugès in Pessac, designed in 1924 by Le Corbusier. Many of the innovations introduced by the Modern movement, such as flat roofs, large windows and solar protection elements, are still evident in the [...] Read more.
This paper looks at the energy efficiency of the Cité Frugès in Pessac, designed in 1924 by Le Corbusier. Many of the innovations introduced by the Modern movement, such as flat roofs, large windows and solar protection elements, are still evident in the way architecture is carried out today. Most of these contributions were implemented in the Cité Frugès. The aim is to evaluate the architectural design criteria that most influenced the energy performance of Le Corbusier’s works, and to analyse the improvement that could be achieved by energy rehabilitation. The methodology used consisted of a systematised study of the five dwellings designed by Le Corbusier. For the modelling and calculation of their energy performance the “Líder–Calener unified tool” was used for evaluation, under the standards of compliance with European regulations for nearly zero energy consumption buildings. Energy parameters, such as thermal transmittance, solar gains and overall annual energy demand, were tested. The results obtained provide information on energy performance and allow for the analysis of possible energy refurbishment alternatives. The analysis of the results makes it possible to identify and qualitatively and quantitatively assess the limitations of the most relevant architectural and construction aspects in relation to energy efficiency and to draw up an energy map of the Cité Frugès in Pessac. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environmental Assessment of Occupied Buildings Facing Future Challenges)
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