I-CUB: "Indoor Climate-Users-Buildings" - interrelationships affecting residential thermal comfort and building related health symptoms

Research Project, 2019 – 2021

People spend approximately 80–90% of their time inside buildings, of which a substantial part is spent at home. Research has shown that the indoor environment affects people’s health and wellbeing, but how do various building characteristics, occupant factors and combinations of them contribute to this? What kinds of buildings provide the most comfortable and healthy indoor environments?This project aims to understand the complex interactions between indoor climate, building and user characteristics and users’ perception of their home’s environment in order to provide information on what it means and how to create comfortable and healthy housing. This will be achieved with the use of existing, extensive housing stock survey data collected by the Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning (Boverket) in 2007/2008, which have not been analysed on a comprehensive level in the way we propose. Through novel statistical methods, we will develop a data-driven tool for the evaluation of buildings in terms of their ability to ensure comfort and health. Such tool will be valuable to multiple stakeholders (industry, government, building organizations, certification schemes) for the assessment and development of existing and new buildings.Expertise from indoor environment science, building technology, building services engineering, user perception and statistics are merged in the project to advance the way we design new and renovated residential buildings.