Existing School Buildings Research Articles

Essential Attributes to Stimulate 21st Century Skills amongst Children Learning in Pre-war Schools

Globally, new schools are built according to users' needs and are comparable with the newest pedagogical approach. The efforts, however, raised concern about the affordance of existing school buildings and whether the users are experiencing the present educational transformation. This study, therefore, aims to examine factors that qualify a school to provide twenty-first-century learning, specifically pre-war school buildings in Scotland. Through a focus group design charrette, this study obtained forty-eight primary six children’s perceptions of what the school spaces afford. Schools should provide sufficient learning spaces that are broadly utilized and flexible to provide supplementary learning experiences for children.

Retrofitting of typical existing school buildings through seismic vulnerability assessment

Retrofitting of typical existing school buildings through seismic vulnerability assessment

Assessing the effectiveness of building retrofits in reducing GHG emissions: A Canadian school case study

This paper investigates the impact of energy retrofits on life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across different electricity grid profiles in Montreal, Ottawa, and Halifax, using an existing school building as a case study. Using DesignBuilder for energy simulations and OneClick LCA for GHG emissions estimation, this study evaluates whether the reduction in the operational emission achieved by energy savings from retrofits can outweigh the increased embodied emissions from new envelope materials and equipment. In Montreal and Ottawa, where electricity is mainly generated from renewables and non-fossil fuels, retrofits involving electric heating and envelope improvements could decrease life cycle GHG emissions by up to 75 %. However, if the building initially used electric heating, the retrofits led to an increase in life cycle carbon emissions by 170 % in Montreal and 56 % in Ottawa, respectively, due to the embodied emissions of retrofit materials and equipment. In Halifax, where the electricity grid relies heavily on fossil fuels, all retrofit scenarios showed a positive impact on GHG reductions. Enhancing the building envelope and transitioning from natural gas to electric heating slightly reduced total emissions by 4 %, but retaining natural gas heating decreased the total life cycle GHG emissions by 27 %. This study emphasizes the importance of a comprehensive life cycle assessment in developing policies for achieving carbon neutrality. It demonstrates that the effectiveness of retrofits in reducing GHG emissions significantly depends on the local energy grid, suggesting tailored approaches based on regional energy profiles to optimize emission reductions and energy efficiency.

Seismic Damage Probability Assessment of Existing Reinforced Concrete School Buildings in Afghanistan

Existing Reinforced Concrete School buildings with low earthquake resistance may suffer structural failure or severe damage in a catastrophic seismic event. Ascertaining earthquake resistance in existing school buildings is vital to confirming the safety of students, teachers, and all school members. Reinforced concrete (RC) has been used significantly for numerous years as the primary material due to its easy access and low cost-effectiveness in construction. The current research focused on analyzing the existing RC school buildings designed and constructed in various regions of Afghanistan over the last three decades. Seismic fragility curves, which are generated from incremental dynamic analysis (IDA), have been used to evaluate the damage probability of RC school buildings against earthquake ground motions. In this investigation, 34 RC school buildings were selected from an extensive database and subsequently classified as either A-type or B-type based on specific criteria, including design details and construction year. Following this classification, an assessment of the seismic damage probability for these buildings was conducted using probabilistic models based on IDA curves. The results indicate that A-type school buildings with newer construction are less prone to damage compared to B-type school buildings, showing improved resilience. Especially the B-type buildings in seismic Zone-I are found to be highly vulnerable under the maximum considered earthquake scenarios.

Seismic reinforcement effect and vibration test of externally attached substructures in a selected Japan school building

In the long-term seismic work in Japan, an effective seismic reinforcement design system and reasonable seismic reinforcement technology have been developed, which is worth learning from. In this paper, the seismic reinforcement of a school building in Japan is taken as an example. Firstly, an overall reinforcement scheme of external prestressed precast concrete (PC) frame and steel brace is proposed. Then, based on the calculation results of seismic reinforcement and the ambient measurement before and after seismic reinforcement, the effectiveness and rationality of the seismic reinforcement method are analyzed. The results show that the seismic reinforcement method of attached substructures changes the original structural system, and solves the problems of excessive deformation and insufficient seismic performance. The reinforcement method improves the story stiffness of the structure, and the vibration period of simple harmonic motion after the implementation of seismic reinforcement is reduced by 0.845 times at most. The research results can provide reference for seismic reinforcement design and performance evaluation of existing school buildings.

Numerička i višekriterijumska analiza energetskih tokova u osnovnoj školi na teritoriji grada Kragujevca

In this investigation, a numerical and multi-criteria analysis of energy flow in the primary school in the city of Kragujevac is presented. A model of the existing school building with a district heating system was created. Alternative heating systems (the gas boiler, the pellet boiler, and the ground source heat pump) were analyzed to achieve energy savings. Different types of buildings are simulated with and without photovoltaic panels. Google SketchUp was used for building modeling, while EnergyPlus simulated buildings' energy behavior in real conditions. Results show that pellet boilers with photovoltaic panels can reduce primary energy by 89% and CO₂ emission by 87.55%. For the ground source heat pump with photovoltaic panels, the final energy saving is 77.83%, primary energy saving is 70.82%, and CO₂ reduction is 57.90%. Using numerical and multi-criteria analyses, the authors want to bring the existing public buildings closer to the zero-energy building concept and the city closer to the sustainable development concept.

A MULTICRITERIA METHOD TO IDENTIFY AND RANK IEQ CRITICALITIES: MEASUREMENTS AND APPLICATIONS FOR AN EXISTING SCHOOL BUILDING

This study proposes a method to obtain a ranking of the critical issues related to Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ)in existing school buildings . A multi-criteria method for a comprehensive evaluation of IEQ in school buildings is described and discussed. The method includes data collection, field measurements, and subjective investigations. The novelty of the study does not lie in the single stages of which the method is composed (for example in the phase involving field measurements, there are consolidated procedures in the technical and scientific literature to conduct them), but rather in the collection and rationalization of a complete and articulated assessment process that can guide the technicians and managers in the decision making. To show the whole proposed evaluation method, the case study of the university classrooms of the School of Engineering of Pisa was studied. From the application of the evaluation method to the case study, a rank of the IEQ critical issues observed and a rank of the most IEQ critical environments was therefore obtained. The study also focused on the impact of weighting schemes of the IEQ assessment results. Then the results of the case study were discussed by evaluating the impact of alternative weighing schemes present in the scientific literature. The discussion shows that to identify the most critical environmental factors, the choice of the weighting scheme is extremely important although the greatest weight does not always correspond to the most critical environmental factor. The presented results can interest not only technical personnel involved in IEQ assessments and interventions for its improvement, but also researchers investigating IEQ that intend to compare methodologies and weighting schemes.

Analysis of Heating Energy Consumption of School Buildings in Shigatse, Tibet

This paper is launched against the background of excessive heating energy consumption in China, continuous calls for sustainable development, and unsatisfactory heating energy use in primary and secondary schools in Shigatse, Xizang. Through field research on the existing school buildings in Shigatse, Xizang, a large number of first-hand materials were obtained, and then through targeted summary and classification of the data, the key problems leading to high energy consumption, low clean energy utilization rate and poor thermal comfort of school buildings in Shigatse, Xizang were found. On this basis, further analysis will be conducted to address the issue, seeking ways and methods to utilize clean energy technologies such as solar heating to solve the heating problem in school teaching buildings.

Current problems of arranging shelters in educational institutions in Ukraine

This study covered the issue of creating safe conditions for all participants of the educational process in educational institutions in conditions of potential danger. The topic has become particularly relevant since 2022 as a result of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. The arrangement of simple shelters (fortifications) in existing school buildings is decided by state authorities, legislative structures, regional institutions, and school administrations. The purpose of this study was to comprehensively examine the problem of creating a safe learning environment, identify indicative research areas, establish legislative guidelines, and preventively assess the real needs of protective structures to ensure the educational process at school. The study used the initial analysis of legal provisions, general scientific methods, systematisation and generalisation of special information, empirical methods, the method of expert assessments, factor analysis (for consideration of architectural solutions), and an interdisciplinary review of the provisions of the educational process security. The stages of solving the problem of designing and building shelters in educational institutions of Ukraine were outlined. The main factors in the formation of architectural solutions for shelters and the safety of the educational process were identified as follows: legislative; organisational; architectural and planning; engineering and technical; pedagogical; and daily. The scientific and pedagogical principles were addressed, the study highlighted the modern trends and innovative models of school education that influence the architectural organisation of school buildings. Planning solutions should provide for variant ergonomic organisation of the educational process, open educational, communication, and recreational spaces. It was emphasised that the educational environment of a school should consider security requirements. The study examined the case of a newly built school with a shelter for pupils and teachers that has adequate conditions for learning. The practical value of the study lies in the possibility of applying certain aspects and conclusions in the real design of educational institutions based on a comprehensive consideration of security requirements

Benefits and thermal limits of CO2-driven signaled windows opening in schools: an in-depth data-driven analysis

In the post-pandemic era, Signaled Manual Airing (SMA, i.e. windows opening driven by alarms and real-time IAQ measurements) is still expected to play a role in schools, either independently or in support of mechanical ventilation (MV) systems, as a cost-effective solution to meet more stringent regulatory requirements for indoor CO2 levels. The present study in-depth evaluates the impact of SMA on improved levels of CO2 but also its thermal downside in winter via a dedicated IoT-IAQ monitoring platform equipped with fully tuneable multi-threshold alarm schemes. An aged middle-school building, representative of a large amount of old existing school buildings in Italy (and Europe) and a Northern Italy location, were selected to investigate cold and high humidity winter conditions as the most critical for SMA. The mean indoor CO2 difference with reference classrooms without alarms ranged from 20% to an impressive nearly 70% reduction. We demonstrate a clear dependence on signalling mode and level of system usage learning. The best results were in fact attained with acoustically enhanced signalling (acu-SMA). As a downside effect, operating SMA at even moderately cold latitudes caused also thermal discomfort during the coldest days, with worsened response to the alarms. The observed mean CO2 levels maintained by classroom groups appear to be correlated with the average indoor temperature and its inverse product [CO2*Tindoor]-1 to a cumulative fatigue function with memory effect, referred as “thermal behavioural fatigue“. Bounds of generalization, further developments towards hybrid ventilation solutions and most suitable Italian regions for operating SMA in schools are finally discussed.

Failure of Gedikbulak K-12 School Building on October 23, 2011, in Van, Turkey Earthquake

A major earthquake with a magnitude Mw = 7.2 (ML = 6.7) occurred in the Eastern part of Turkey on October 23, 2011. The ground motion had a measured peak ground acceleration of 0.18×g. The earthquake damaged masonry and reinforced concrete structures ranging from minor cracking to total collapse. A 4-story reinforced concrete school building in Gedikbulak Village experienced total failure during this earthquake. This school building was a typical project (No: 10370) prepared by the Ministry of Education of Turkey and this typical project was widely being used for the construction of school buildings in various locations throughout Turkey. This paper explains the site observations of the Atılım University Reconnaissance Team carried out at the collapse site of the school building a few days after the main shock and detailed analysis with an emphasis on the reason for the failure of the school building. The analysis results indicated that the collapse happened due to the separation of the bottom of shear walls (in both x- and y-directions) from the foundation due to inadequate development and lap splice length of the plain reinforcing bars. Comments were made for existing school buildings to prevent any collapses in future earthquakes.

Energy refurbishment planning of Italian school buildings using data-driven predictive models

In the current practice, the design of energy refurbishment interventions for existing buildings is typically addressed by performing time-consuming software-based numerical simulations. However, this approach may be not suitable for preliminary assessment studies, especially when large building portfolios are involved. Therefore, this research work aims at developing simplified data-driven predictive models to estimate the energy consumption of existing school buildings in Italy and support the decision-making process in energy refurbishment intervention planning at a large scale. To accomplish this, an extensive database is assembled through comprehensive on-site surveys of school buildings in Southern Italy. For each school, a Building Information Modelling (BIM) model is developed and validated considering real energy consumption data. These BIM models serve in the design of suitable energy refurbishment interventions. Moreover, a comprehensive parametric investigation based on refined energy analyses is carried out to significantly improve and integrate the dataset. To derive the predictive models, firstly the most relevant parameters for energy consumption are identified by performing sensitivity analyses. Based on these findings, predictive models are generated through a multiple linear regression method. The suggested models provide an estimation of the energy consumption of the “as-built” configuration, as well as the costs and benefits of alternative energy refurbishment scenarios. The reliability of the proposed simplified relationships is substantiated through a statistical analysis of the main error indices. Results highlight that the building's shape factor (i.e., the ratio between the building's envelope area and its volume) and the area-weighted average of the thermal properties of the building envelope significantly affect both the energy consumption of school buildings and the achievable savings through retrofitting interventions. Finally, a framework for the preliminary design of energy refurbishment of buildings, based on the implementation of the herein developed predictive model, is proposed and illustrated through a worked example application.Worth noting that, while the proposed approach is currently limited to school buildings, the methodology can conceptually be extended to any building typology, provided that suitable data on energy consumption are available.

EVALUATING STRUCTURAL RESILIENCY OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS AS EMERGENCY SHELTERS IN NATURAL DISASTERS

Public schools are the second largest sector of public infrastructure spending following highways, and there are about 84,000 public schools with 100,000 buildings in the United States. In addition to their primary functions as learning facilities, public schools usually serve an important role as emergency shelters and community resilience hubs during and after natural disasters, such as earthquake, windstorm, and flooding. In order to effectively fulfill the secondary function as emergency shelters, the school infrastructures need to be operational during and after the disasters. However, there are gaps between the existing school building structural capacities and the requirements of essential buildings as emergency shelters. In this paper, a generic 3-story steel framing K-12 school building will be analyzed based on the design loads and load combinations specified in ASCE-7: Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures. The design loads in ASCE-7 are continuously updated to address the climate changes and new challenges, which will be reflected in the analysis to compare the building design criteria and structural capacities from the past two decades. The structural capacity will be evaluated as an emergency shelter/public assembly (Risk Category IV) during and post disasters, versus a regular school building (Risk Category II or III). Full live loads will be combined with the natural disaster loads to evaluate the school building capacity as a community resiliency hub. The results will be used to assess the structural resilience level of school buildings functioning as emergency shelters in natural disasters.

Optimization of the seismic resistance of school buildings using artificial intelligence and sensitivity analysis theories – A Taiwan case study

School buildings in Taiwan are designed not only as places of education, but also as temporary shelters in the aftermath of major earthquakes. Therefore, seismic resistance assessments of existing school buildings are very important. Another issue worth discussing is how to choose the appropriate number of school case studies and seismic factors when using artificial intelligence (AI) to infer the seismic resistance of school buildings. This is because when the number is too high, a large amount of time and money will be required to build the seismic database. If the number is too low, then the inference results will be unsatisfactory. This study applied different research methods to address these issues. First, sensitivity analysis was conducted to determine the optimal number of seismic factors and school case studies. Then, gray theory was utilized to explore the correlations between the seismic factors and seismic resistance of school buildings. Finally, a support vector machine (SVM) and gene expression programming (GEP) were used to determine the optimal assessment models. The SVM was also validated by 10-fold cross-validation and back-propagation network. The results show that when researchers used AI theories, at least five factors were considered. If researchers want to obtain a better inference result, then the number of factors can exceed 10. With regard to the number of cases, it should be twice the number of factors, but more than three times is ideal. For the seismic assessment models inferred by SVM and GEP, the root mean square error of the testing cases ranged from 0.0501 to 0.0541, and 0.0757 to 0.0981, respectively, which indicates good performance. The results can be adopted by structural engineers and architects. The research methods developed in this study can also be referenced by researchers in the future.

Improving School Reconstruction Projects Satisfaction Outcomes Using Fuzzy Quality Function Deployment (FQFD)

School buildings and facilities constitute essential educational infrastructure and have a formative impact on the safety, development, and socialization of students. However, many existing school buildings are increasingly aging and deteriorating, requiring urgent refurbishment, raising the need to assess and develop a quality function to propose strategies for improved school building reconstruction. Apart from the initial planning phase, the reconstruction design process usually requires detailed information regarding owner/user demands and is often presented in terms of user dissatisfaction. This paper applies fuzzy quality function deployment (FQFD) to transform actual user needs into an improved technical strategy that can be realized by the design unit through the sequence of the matrix method. The resulting framework identifies a total of eight major components of user dissatisfaction, along with three key school-design improvement strategies, including the use of environmentally sound materials, overall quality of design and planning, and playground planning. In terms of technology improvement strategies, the prioritized design improvement strategies for increasing school reconstruction satisfaction include considerations of practicality and constructability, planning use points and maintenance methods, designing the site according to the local terrain, and using materials that match the layout of the environment. The approach proposed in this study can be used to enhance the efficiency of the reconstruction of aging buildings and the research results can also augment ontological knowledge on the reconstruction of aging campus buildings.

Thermal Performance Assessment of Envelope Retrofits for Existing School Buildings in a Hot–Humid Climate: A Case Study in Chennai, India

This study aims to propose building envelope retrofit packages for existing naturally ventilated school buildings in the hot–humid climatic region of Chennai, India. Indoor thermal parameters were collected through field studies from nine sample classrooms of a selected school building in May 2019, between 9.00 am and 4.00 pm. The thermal performance assessment of the existing building was performed by examining the discomfort hours using the CBE thermal comfort tool. Envelope retrofit strategies gathered from the literature and building standards were applied and studied through simulation. The findings reveal the enormous potential to increase the thermal comfort of existing school buildings through envelope retrofit measures. The results demonstrate that the whole-building temperature can be reduced up to 3.2 °C in summer and up to 3.4 °C in winter. Implementing retrofit measures to the building envelopes of existing buildings will help school owners to increase the comfortable hours of whole buildings by up to 17%. In comparison, annual energy savings of up to 13% for the whole building can be made by enhancing the thermal performance of the building envelope. The findings will also help architects to optimise thermal performance and energy usage with minimal interventions.

Optimization research on energy-saving and life-cycle decarbonization retrofitting of existing school buildings: A case study of a school in Nanjing

Given the continuous urbanization, many old buildings urgently need retrofitting. Considering the impact on student health, carbon peaking and carbon neutrality policies, the retrofitting of school buildings has become a focus for researchers. This paper presents a complete optimization method for energy-saving and life-cycle decarbonization retrofitting of existing school buildings. Through this method, a target building is first evaluated from three aspects: envelope, energy system and occupation information, and the weak links of the retrofit project are analyzed through combining measurement and simulation. The study describes the evaluation indicators of two optimization objectives (energy-saving and life-cycle decarbonization) and analyzes the constraints and optimization variables in the retrofit from the aspects of site layout, geometry, structure, envelope and energy system. Consequently, an efficient optimization method is introduced. The proposed method is applied to a school retrofit case in Nanjing, China. The results show that through the optimization of energy-saving, the retrofitted school can produce 102,786 kWh (14.36 kwh/m2) of excess renewable power per year. Upon applying the life-cycle decarbonization optimization, the retrofitted school can achieve zero carbon emissions throughout its life cycle and save 1,920,853.3 kg of carbon emissions in the region.

Thermal Retrofitting of Primary School Buildings in Egypt Optimizing Energy Efficiency and Thermal Comfort

As buildings are responsible for almost 30% of the total energy consumption worldwide, it makes it a necessary thing to study them and provide solutions to optimize their energy consumption, provide more thermal comfort for their users and mitigate their negative environmental impacts. Governmental school buildings in Egypt follow the same prototypes since the 1992 earthquake, these buildings represent a broad sector of buildings. These building prototypes are implemented in all Egypt governorates regardless of their climatic conditions and location which results in the lack of achieving the required thermal comfort for the students. This research paper aims at determining the most effective optimization strategies for school buildings in Egypt to enhance the occupants’ thermal comfort. The chosen school building prototype is the `most widely used in Cairo, Egypt as it represents around 34% of the seven prototypes of the constructed school buildings according to the General Authority for Educational Buildings (GAEB). By applying these retrofit strategies to the chosen prototype, the thermal retrofitting of existing school buildings in Egypt will create thermally optimized indoor environments for classrooms which will contribute to improving the educational environment in Egypt. Moreover, it will provide enhanced thermal comfort conditions to its users which will reflect on their academic development. The main contribution of this research is that the simulation studies highlighted the importance of integrating low-cost retrofitting strategies to balance the indoor temperature and increase the students’ thermal comfort. By applying simple low-cost retrofitting strategies such as roof shading and window shading, the discomfort hours in classrooms were reduced by 20%.

Fragility curves of Italian school buildings: derivation from L’Aquila 2009 earthquake damage via observational and heuristic approaches

Recent seismic events worldwide have demonstrated the high vulnerability of existing school buildings and the urgent need to have reliable tools for the rapid seismic performance assessment and damage and loss quantification. Indeed, the significant damage observed on structural and non-structural components may have a significant impact in terms of direct and indirect losses making critical the recovery of stricken communities. Although a significant amount of work has been done in developing fragility curves for the residential building stock, only few contributions clearly refer to school buildings that significantly differ in terms of the main characteristics from the residential ones. This research work proposes fragility curves for reinforced concrete and unreinforced masonry public school buildings typical of the Italian building stock, based on the damage observed in the aftermath of the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake. A comprehensive and unique database including data on damaged and undamaged school buildings (2037 records) in the Abruzzo region was built using data from four different sources. Due to limited amount of data, the fragility curves can be very sensitive to the method adopted for their derivation, thus three different approaches (i.e. empirical, empirical-binomial, heuristic) are considered in the paper and the results are compared. Finally, a direct comparison with fragility curves available in the literature for the Italian residential building stock is presented.

Seismic Resilience Assessment in Optimally Integrated Retrofitting of Existing School Buildings in Italy

Modern society requires that structures exhibit greater levels of resilience, especially under earthquakes. The seismic resilience of buildings is thus gaining increased attention as a particular, beyond-code approach. Seismically retrofitted buildings behave satisfactorily under expected earthquake scenarios; however, this does not guarantee operativity after a seismic event. This study critically reviews several methods currently available in the literature that quantify the seismic resilience level of buildings from different perspectives. An existing reinforced concrete school building, retrofitted according to four distinct strategies, is first evaluated in terms of seismic resilience levels. The overview and critical analysis of available resilience assessment frameworks determine the most suitable parameters to measure the seismic resilience for buildings. Subsequently, this metric is incorporated as an additional decision variable into an integrated seismic and energy retrofitting set of strategies. A multicriteria decision-making analysis is performed to select the optimally combined seismic and energy retrofitting alternative under social, technical, environmental evaluation, and seismic resilience aspects. We show how resilience impacts the preference for integrated seismic and energy retrofitting strategies, especially when this metric is considered as an annualized expected value.