Abstract
When planning the energy demand of ventilation, proper consideration should be given to the possible scenarios of indoor air quality and pollutant concentrations. The purpose of the present research is to create a practical method of prioritising indoor air pollutants, considering technical, economical and health aspects, in the Indoor Air Quality model (IAQ). In order to find the global weights for the combined IAQindex model sub-elements (in practice, air pollutant concentrations), the Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approach is used. The authors have approached the problem of a weighting scheme in a model such as the complex model of the IAQ related to making decisions with many criteria and with the Multi-Attribute Decision Making MADM approach (specifically MCDM). The basis of the MADM method is a decision matrix constructed rationally by the authors, which includes six attributes: actual indoor air carbon dioxide concentration, total volatile organic compounds (TVOCs) and formaldehyde HCHO concentration, and their anthropogenic and construction product emissions to the indoor environment. The decision model of IAQindex includes five alternatives (possible situations), and the combination of pollutant concentration attributes with additional emission attributes is related to the indoor environment under specific situation. For defining the weights of criteria, the authors provide objective approaches: (i) entropy-based approach considering measuring the amount of information, and (ii) CRITIC, a statistic-based approach. The value of the presented method, i.e., the determination of global weights for IAQ components, is shown as a practical application to determine IAQ and the Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) index for an office building used as a case study.
Highlights
Where the sum of the adjusted weights WP,j of all pollutants to be removed by ventilation should be in unity. This weighting scheme has been used by the authors in previous years, but in this article, we propose a better and more objective approach based on the Multi-Attribute Decision Making (MADM) approach
In the decision matrix of the Indoor Air Quality model (IAQ) weighting scheme according to Table 1, the flow chart presented in Figure 3 provides the necessary steps and, includes MADM elements: (1) attributes in the number j = 1 . . . 3 . . . , which are indoor air pollution concentrations covered by the models IAQquality, IAQcomfort and IAQcomfort / health described by Equations (4)–(6) and Figure 2; the number of attributes beyond j = 7 is not limited because model components like VOCodorous or VOCnon-odorous and other pollutants can be multiplied
IEQindex results calculated from Equation (7) with sub-component IAQ calculations; assuming realistic uncertainty of measurements for a case study
Summary
In literature on the Multi-Attribute Decision Making (MADM )method, the combined Indoor Air P. One of the main criteria for optimising such a decision problem should be, directly or indirectly, the cost of ventilation for the elimination of excess pollution concentrations. For the purposes of the decision problem, it is assumed that the general criterion for optimising such a weighing system is to include a range of IAQ indicators and components, i.e., types of contaminants that are most important due to health and toxicity or the amount of air to be removed by the ventilation system. The MADM method, as a specific kind of Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approach, has emerged as a formal methodology for assessing available information and providing values supporting decision-makers in many areas, including environmental engineering.
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