How Building Design Affects Indoor Thermal Comfort

Dear Colleagues,

Indoor thermal comfort is a key determinant of human health, well-being, and indoor environmental quality (IEQ). Under climate change and energy poverty, improving indoor thermal environments has become an important research focus. Building design plays a fundamental role in shaping indoor microclimates and influencing occupants’ thermal perception and physiological responses.

Traditional thermal comfort models and building environmental control strategies are often limited in capturing dynamic indoor conditions, individual differences, and adaptive human behaviors. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and multi-source sensing technologies, new opportunities have emerged for data-driven modeling of human thermal responses and performance-based analysis of indoor environments.

In parallel, smart building technologies and IoT-enabled systems are enabling a transition from static environmental regulation to adaptive and intelligent thermal control strategies. This shift supports the development of human-centric and self-optimizing indoor environments based on continuous sensing, prediction, and feedback control.

This Special Issue aims to explore the interactions among building design, indoor thermal environments, and human thermal responses, with a focus on accurate physical and physiological measurements, AI-driven modeling, thermal comfort prediction, and intelligent environmental regulation. It provides an interdisciplinary platform integrating biometeorology, building science, environmental engineering, and artificial intelligence to advance research on healthy and climate-adaptive indoor environments.

Particular attention may also be given to vulnerable population groups, such as older adults, who exhibit distinct thermal perception and physiological responses under indoor environmental stress.

Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

− Indoor thermal comfort and human thermal response mechanisms;

− Human thermal adaptation in dynamic indoor environments;

− AI and machine learning for thermal comfort prediction and modeling;

− Multi-source environmental and physiological data fusion;

− Infrared thermography and wearable sensing for thermal monitoring;

− Intelligent indoor thermal environment regulation and control;

− Smart buildings and AI-based HVAC systems;

− Digital twin and IoT applications in building environment management;

− Data-driven building performance optimization;

− Climate-adaptive building design and indoor environmental resilience;

− Thermal health and risk assessment in built environments;

− Methods and measurement instruments for the main microclimatic variables.

We welcome original research articles, review papers, and methodological studies addressing advances in AI-enabled thermal environment modeling, intelligent building control, and human-centered indoor environmental design. We appreciate your interest in this Special Issue. We look forward to your contributions.

Dr. Bin Li
Dr. Luca Caneparo
Dr. Yuqing Zhang
Dr. Jiwei Zou
Guest Editors

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• indoor thermal comfort
• human thermal response
• artificial intelligence
• machine learning
• smart buildings
• intelligent thermal control
• multi-source data fusion
• microclimatic and physiological measurements
• digital twin
• IoT
• climate-adaptive design