Long-term monitoring for indoor climate assessment – The association between objective and subjective data

Abstract

To enhance indoor climate monitoring and indoor climate assessment, a better understanding of the collection and analysis of monitored data, over longer time periods, is necessary. The goal of this work is to improve long-term monitoring in order to arrive at better performance of building indoor climate, with the perception of occupants in mind. Indoor climate was monitored in an open plan office lay-out in two Case study office buildings, during two periods each. Indoor climate data was obtained at different resolution levels (locations) in the work environment. Additionally, information from the occupants was gathered using two methods: short, right-now surveys and wrist skin temperature measurements (biosensed data). In total, 160 subjective responses were obtained. Outcomes showed that measurement at a specific resolution level is required for representativeness. For the Case studies, this level depended on the office lay-out and could not be generalized. Correlations between perceived thermal comfort and objective data, either of the indoor climate or the biosensed data were moderate at best. Better applicability of the data was found when using it in combination with classification algorithms, obtaining predictions of higher accuracy (close to 65% for the group under investigation).