Abstract
The indoor environmental quality (IEQ) of buildings can have a strong influence on occupants’ comfort, productivity, and health. Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) is necessary in assessing the IEQ of the built environment, and it typically relies on the subjective surveys of thermal quality, air quality, visual quality, and acoustic quality. In this research, we expanded POE to include both objective IEQ measurements and the technical attributes of building systems (TABS) that may affect indoor environment and user satisfaction. The suite of three tools, including user satisfaction survey, workstation IEQ measurements, and TABS in the National Environmental Assessment Toolkit (NEAT) has been deployed in 1601 workstations in 64 office buildings, generating a rich database for statistical evaluation of possible correlations between the physical attributes of workstations, environmental conditions, and user satisfaction. Multivariate regression and multiple correlation coefficient statistical analysis revealed the relationship between measured and perceived IEQ indices, interdependencies between IEQ indices, and other satisfaction variables of significance. The results showed that overall, 55% of occupants responded as “satisfied” or “neutral”, and 45% reported being “dissatisfied” in their thermal quality. Given the dataset, air temperature in work area, size of thermal zone, window quality, level of temperature control, and radiant temperature asymmetry with façade are the critical factors for thermal quality satisfaction in the field. As a result, the outcome of this research contributes to identifying correlations between occupant satisfaction, measured data, and technical attributes of building systems. The presented integrated IEQ assessment method can further afford robust predictions of building performance against metrics and guidelines for IEQ standards to capture revised IEQ thresholds that impact building occupants’ satisfaction.
Highlights
People spend 90% of their time indoors [1]
In a 2010 meta-analysis study concerning human comfort and indoor environmental quality, performed between 1977 and 2009, Wargocki et al, identified that thermal quality ranks as the highest contributing factor for overall satisfaction with IEQ, among other factors such as air, visual, and acoustic qualities [5]
In a 2004 meta-analysis of 100 US office buildings, Moschandreas and Sofuoglu found that temperature is the most crucial factor of occupant comfort [21], and the mean radiant temperature is an important factor for human discomfort, especially in buildings that have poor envelopes [22]
Summary
Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) has been utilized to evaluate building performance in a systemic way to improve indoor environmental quality and user satisfaction on thermal, air, visual, and acoustic conditions [10,11]. In a 2010 meta-analysis study concerning human comfort and indoor environmental quality, performed between 1977 and 2009, Wargocki et al, identified that thermal quality ranks as the highest contributing factor for overall satisfaction with IEQ, among other factors such as air, visual, and acoustic qualities [5]. In a 2002 field intervention study at a call center in Finland, Niemala et al identified a 7% improvement in productivity for call center employees (defined as the number of telephone communications divided by the active work time) by the installation of extra cooling capacity, supporting the need for individual temperature control [25]
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