An investigation of thermal comfort adaptation behaviour in office buildings in the UK

Around 40% of total energy consumption in the UK is consumed by creating comfortable indoor environment for occupants. Occupants’ behaviour in terms of achieving thermal comfort could have a significant impact on a building’s energy consumption. Therefore, understanding the interactions of occupants with their buildings would be essential to provide a thermal comfort environment that is less reliance on energy-intensive heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems, to meet energysaving and carbon emission targets. This paper presents the findings of a year-long field study conducted in non-air-conditioned office buildings in the UK. Occupants’ adaptive responses in terms of technological and personal dimensions are dynamic processes which could vary with both indoor and outdoor thermal conditions. The adaptive behaviours of occupants in the surveyed building show substantial seasonal and daily variations. Our study shows that non-physical factors such as habit could influence the adaptive responses of occupants. However, occupants sometimes displayed inappropriate adaptive behaviour, which could lead to a misuse of energy. This paper attempts to illustrate how occupants would adapt and interact with their built environment and consequently contribute to development of a guide for future design/refurbishment of buildings and to develop energy management systems for a comfortable built environment.

Architectural enthusiasm: visiting buildings with The Twentieth Century Society

In this paper we put forward the concept of architectural enthusiasm—a collective passion and shared emotional affiliation for buildings and architecture. Through this concept and empirical material based on participation in the architectural tours of The Twentieth Century Society (a UK-based architectural conservation group), we contribute to recent work on the built environment and geographies of architecture in three ways: first, we reinforce the importance of emotion to people’s engagements with buildings, emphasising the shared and practised nature of these engagements; second, we highlight the role of architectural enthusiasts as agents with the potential to shape and transform the built environment; and third, we make connections between (seemingly) disparate engagements with buildings through a continuum of practice incorporating urbex, local history, architectural practice and training, and mass architectural tourism. Unveiling these continuities has important implications for future research into the built environment, highlighting the need to take emotion seriously in all sorts of professional as well as enthusiastic encounters with buildings, and unsettling the categories of amateur and expert within architectural practices.

Time valued life cycle greenhouse gas emissions from buildings

The UK has adopted legally binding carbon reduction targets of 34% by 2020 and 80% by 2050 (measured against the 1990 baseline). Buildings are estimated to be responsible for more than 50% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the UK. These consist of both operational, produced during use, and embodied, produced during manufacture of materials and components, and during construction, refurbishments and demolition. A brief assessment suggests that it is unlikely that UK emission reduction targets can be met without substantial reductions in both Oc and Ec. Oc occurs over the lifetime of a building whereas the bulk of Ec occurs at the start of a building’s life. A time value for emissions could influence the decision making process when it comes to comparing mitigation measures which have benefits that occur at different times. An example might be the choice between building construction using low Ec construction materials versus building construction using high Ec construction materials but with lower Oc, although the use of high Ec materials does not necessarily imply a lower Oc. Particular time related issues examined here are: the urgency of the need to achieve large emissions reductions during the next 10 to 20 years; the earlier effective action is taken, the less costly it will be; future reduction in carbon intensity of energy supply; the carbon cycle and relationship between the release of GHG’s and their subsequent concentrations in the atmosphere. An equation is proposed, which weights emissions according to when they occur during the building life cycle, and which effectively increases Ec as a proportion of the total, suggesting that reducing Ec is likely to be more beneficial, in terms of climate change, for most new buildings. Thus, giving higher priority to Ec reductions is likely to result in a bigger positive impact on climate change and mitigation costs.

A semiotic framework for information representation of energy consumption in office buildings

Taking a perspective from a whole building lifecycle, occupier's actions could account for about 50% of energy. However occupants' activities influence building energy performance is still a blind area. Building energy performance is thought to be the result of a combination of building fabrics, building services and occupants' activities, along with their interactions. In this sense, energy consumption in built environment is regarded as a socio-technical system. In order to understand how such a system works, a range of physical, technical and social information is involved that needs to be integrated and aligned. This paper has proposed a semiotic framework to add value for Building Information Modelling, incorporating energy-related occupancy factors in a context of office buildings. Further, building information has been addressed semantically to describe a building space from the facility management perspective. Finally, the framework guides to set up building information representation system, which can help facility managers to manage buildings efficiently by improving their understanding on how office buildings are operated and used.

A review of the performance of different ventilation and airflow distribution systems in buildings

The objective of this article is to review the scientific literature on airflow distribution systems and ventilation effectiveness to identify and assess the most suitable room air distribution methods for various spaces. In this study, different ventilation systems are classified according to specific requirements and assessment procedures. This study shows that eight ventilation methods have been employed in the built environment for different purposes and tasks. The investigation shows that numerous studies have been carried out on ventilation effectiveness but few studies have been done regarding other aspects of air distribution. Amongst existing types of ventilation systems, the performance of each ventilation methods varies from one case to another due to different usages of the ventilation system in a room and the different assessment indices used. This review shows that the assessment of ventilation effectiveness or efficiency should be determined according to each task of the ventilation system, such as removal of heat, removal of pollutant, supply fresh air to the breathing zone or protecting the occupant from cross infection. The analysis results form a basic framework regarding the application of airflow distribution for the benefit of designers, architects, engineers, installers and building owners.

A review of existing building benchmarks and the development of a set of reference office buildings for England and Wales

The modern built environment has become more complex in terms of building types, environmental systems and use profiles. This complexity causes difficulties in terms of optimising buildings energy design. In this circumstance, introducing a set of prototype reference buildings, or so called benchmark buildings, that are able to represent all or majority parts of the UK building stock may be useful for the examination of the impact of national energy policies on building energy consumption. This study proposes a set of reference office buildings for England and Wales based on the information collected from the Non-Domestic Building Stock (NDBS) project and an intensive review of the existing building benchmarks. The proposed building benchmark comprises 10 prototypical reference buildings, which in relation to built form and size, represent 95% of office buildings in England and Wales. This building benchmark provides a platform for those involved in building energy simulations to evaluate energy-efficiency measures and for policy-makers to assess the influence of different building energy policies.

Simple prompts reduce inadvertent energy consumption from lighting in office buildings

Building designs regularly fail to achieve the anticipated levels of in-use energy consumption. The interaction of occupants with building controls is often cited as a key factor behind this discrepancy. This paper examines whether one factor in inadvertent energy consumption might be the appearance of post-completion errors (when an intended action is not taken because a primary goal has already been accomplished) in occupants’ interactions with building controls. Post-completion errors have been widely studied in human-computer interaction but the concept has not previously been applied to the interaction of occupants with building controls. Two experiments were carried out to examine the effect of incorporating two different types of simple prompt to reduce post-completion error in the use of light switches in office meeting rooms. Results showed that the prompts were effective and that occupants switched off lights when leaving the room more often when presented with a normative prompt than with a standard injunction. Additionally, an over reliance on PIR sensors to turn off lights after meetings was observed, which reduced their intended energy savings. We conclude that achieving low carbon buildings in practice is not solely a technological issue and that application of user-models from human-computer interaction will encourage appropriate occupant interaction with building controls and help reduce inadvertent energy consumption.

Ventilation performance in a passage between two non-parallel buildings

A great number of studies on wind conditions in passages between slab-type buildings have been conducted in the past. However, wind conditions under different structure and configuration of buildings is still unclear and studies existed still can’t provide guidance on urban planning and design, due to the complexity of buildings and aerodynamics. The aim of this paper is to provide more insight in the mechanism of wind conditions in passages. In this paper, a simplified passage model with non-parallel buildings is developed on the basis of the wind tunnel experiments conducted by Blocken et al. (2008). Numerical simulation based on CFD is employed for a detailed investigation of the wind environment in passages between two long narrow buildings with different directions and model validation is performed by comparing numerical results with corresponding wind tunnel measurements.

Sustainability assessment indicators and methodology for intelligent buildings

The sustainable intelligent building is a building that has the best combination of environmental, social, economic and technical values. And its sustainability assessment is related with system engineering methods and multi-criteria decision-making. Therefore firstly, the wireless monitoring system of sustainable parameters for intelligent buildings is achieved; secondly, the indicators and key issues based on the “whole life circle” for sustainability of intelligent buildings are researched; thirdly, the sustainable assessment model identified on the structure entropy and fuzzy analytic hierarchy process is proposed.

Terahertz analysis of stratified wall plaster at buildings of cultural importance across Europe

Terahertz (THz) radiation is being developed as a tool for the analysis of cultural heritage, and due to recent advances in technology is now available commercially in systems which can be deployed for field analysis. The radiation is capable of penetrating up to one centimetre of wall plaster and is delivered in ultrafast pulses which are reflected from layers within this region. The technique is non-contact, non-invasive and non-destructive. While sub-surface radar is able to penetrate over a metre of wall plaster, producing details of internal structures, infrared and ultraviolet techniques produce information about the surface layers of wall plaster. THz radiation is able to provide information about the interim region of up to approximately one centimetre into the wall surface. Data from Chartres Cathedral, France, Riga Dome Cathedral, Latvia, and Chartreuse du Val de Bénédiction, France is presented each with different research questions. The presence of sub-surface paint layers was expected from documentary evidence, dating to the 13th Century, at Chartres Cathedral. In contrast, at the Riga Dome Cathedral surface painting had been obscured as recently as 1941 during the Russian occupation of Latvia using white lead-based paint. In the 13th Century, wall paintings at the Chapel of the Frescos, Chartreuse du Val de Benediction in Villeneuve les Avignon were constructed using sinopia under-painting on plaster covering uneven stonework.. This paper compares and contrasts the ability of THz radiation to provide information about sub-surface features in churches and Cathedrals across Europe by analysing depth based profiles gained from the reflected signal. © (2013) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).

Emergy-based sustainability assessment of different energy options for green buildings

It is necessary to minimize the environmental impact and utilize natural resources in a sustainable and efficient manner in the early design stage of developing an environmentally-conscious design for a heating, ventilating and air-conditioning system. Energy supply options play a significant role in the total environmental load of heating, ventilating and air-conditioning systems. To assess the environmental impact of different energy options, a new method based on Emergy Analysis is proposed. Emergy Accounting, was first developed and widely used in the area of ecological engineering, but this is the first time it has been used in building service engineering. The environmental impacts due to the energy options are divided into four categories under the Emergy Framework: the depletion of natural resources, the greenhouse effect (carbon dioxide equivalents), the chemical rain effect (sulphur dioxide equivalents), and anthropogenic heat release. The depletion of non-renewable natural resources is indicated by the Environmental Load Ratio, and the environmental carrying capacity is developed to represent the environmental service to dilute the pollutants and anthropogenic heat released. This Emergy evaluation method provides a new way to integrate different environmental impacts under the same framework and thus facilitates better system choices. A case study of six different kinds of energy options consisting of renewable and non-renewable energy was performed by using Emergy Theory, and thus their relative environmental impacts were compared. The results show that the method of electricity generation in energy sources, especially for electricity-powered systems, is the most important factor to determine their overall environmental performance. The direct-fired lithium-bromide absorption type consumes more non-renewable energy, and contributes more to the urban heat island effect compared with other options having the same electricity supply. Using Emergy Analysis, designers and clients can make better-informed, environmentally-conscious selections of heating, ventilating and air-conditioning systems.