Feasibility study of a simple IAQ index for assessing air‐conditioned offices

Abstract

PurposeIt is costly to sample all air pollutants of a general community for continuous indoor air quality (IAQ) assessments. To optimize the resources for IAQ baseline monitoring for general facilities management, this study aims to investigate the feasibility of using a simple IAQ index as a screening parameter of a screening test to identify an asymptomatic air‐conditioned office with probable unsatisfactory IAQ.Design/methodology/approachThe IAQ index is determined from the fractional dose of some representative common indoor air pollutants of unsatisfactory IAQ, either by taking equal importance of the pollutants as a weighting factor or weighted by the regional failure rates with respect to the corresponding air pollutants. Specifically, a database of regional IAQ assessment results of 422 air‐conditioned offices was employed to justify the selected screening levels for the IAQ index.FindingsThe proposed IAQ index of a screening assessment was used for verifying, respectively, 58 and seven air‐conditioned offices of Hong Kong with satisfactory and unsatisfactory IAQ. The results showed that 57 satisfactory offices and two unsatisfactory offices were correctly identified by the unweighted and weighted IAQ indices respectively. Evaluation of the proposed index in further IAQ improvements of some offices showed that it would be a practical tool for preliminary IAQ screening assessment.Research limitations/implicationsThe screening test itself could not identify all the IAQ problems but could identify the office groups with higher risk of unsatisfactory IAQ with reduced effort.Practical implicationsThe study shows the usefulness of the proposed IAQ index to identify the unrecognized IAQ problems for air‐conditioned office environments. It could be adopted as a routine screening measure in facility management of which a wide‐ranging set of IAQ measurement is undesired.Originality/valueThis study presents a useful reference for policymakers, building owners and professionals for indoor environmental assessments.