Indoor air quality, humidity and thermal conditions: CIBSE review of recent research and guidance in criteria and solutions

Julie Godefroy, Anastasia Mylona

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This paper presents a summary of recent CIBSE guidance on health and wellbeing in buildings, including how to define indoor environmental criteria. In a rapidly-evolving field, it also summarises key areas of current research and development, how to evaluate such studies, and what to look out for when reviewing emerging products. The paper focuses on indoor air quality, thermal comfort and humidity, but many of its principles are valid for other aspects of indoor environments. Overall, CIBSE guidance advocates for source control, the precautionary principle, and monitoring of building performance in order to avoid unintended consequences. Key themes of active research, with potential for significant improvements to health and comfort, include: • improving our understanding of conditions best suited to a range of populations (e.g. the elderly, children); • assessing the impact of, and designing for, exposure to a range of environmental stressors. This would be an evolution from current guidelines which tend to respond to one factor alone (e.g. responding to combined excessive heat and noise, rather than to one or the other); • building our knowledge of impacts and solutions in the housing retrofit sector, considering jointly the effects on energy consumption, comfort, indoor air quality and humidity.
Original languageEnglish
Article number3
JournalJournal of Sustainable Design and Applied Research
Volume7
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2019
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • comfort
  • health
  • building performance
  • indoor environmental conditions
  • air quality
  • overheating
  • humidity

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