About the Project

Focus of the Project

• ALIVE focuses on a longitudinal study that assesses the knowledge gap between energy performance and indoor environmental quality, based on the effectiveness of natural ventilation systems in maintaining a healthy environment.

Indoor Air Pollution

• Indoor air quality is the air quality within and around buildings and structures. IAQ is known to affect the health, comfort, and well-being of building occupants. Poor indoor air quality has been linked to sick building syndrome, reduced productivity, and impaired learning in schools. Various sources of indoor air pollutants exist, as the figure below illustrates: 

‌Building Energy

Building energy consumption varies between one building and another, depending on building type, construction, occupancy behaviour, and site characteristics.

Methodology

• Remotely-operated sensors will continuously collect IEQ data in naturally-ventilated buildings and complementary information on thermal comfort, building characteristics, utility bills, occupancy/activity schedules will also be gathered. The combined database will be analysed in terms of WHO and CISBE guidelines to identify occupants’ air pollution exposure and thermal comfort.

The Integrated Approach

• The proposed approach will deploy and validate Building Energy Performance Simulation models that integrate IEQ and energy components for domestic and non-domestic locations to evaluate the approach in real-world conditions.
• These integrated models will be used to determine the impact of natural ventilation on IEQ and overheating for each archetype and evaluate potential impacts to BER and NEAP ratings. The project will also assess the impact of specific recommendations on the national building stock.
• Integrated simulations will also examine additional meteorological conditions, current/future climate conditions, occupancy scenarios and emission profiles.

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