B090 Office IEQ benchmark

Simulations for IEQ benchmarks for air-conditioned offices of Hong Kong

Brief:

Air-conditioned offices in Hong Kong are generally designed to achieve environmental policy recommendations of the acceptable indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and assumed to be satisfactory for occupants. Until now, the IEQ performance has not been evaluated in the perspective of the overall occupants’ acceptance in many air-conditioned offices in which the office IEQ is not benchmarked. This study reports that the IEQ of air-conditioned offices could be benchmarked by the occupants’’ acceptability. By adopting a five-star IEQ benchmarking system based on an expression of the occupants’ overall IEQ acceptance on thermal comfort, indoor air quality and aural and visual comfort and an earlier proposed IEQ index, the occupants’ adaptive response of clothing adjustment for the perceived thermal environment is simulated in order to determine the occupants’ overall IEQ acceptance. The benchmarking parameter of a 5-star rating system and the IEQ index are applied to illustrate relative IEQ performance of some air-conditioned offices in Hong Kong. In particular, the IEQ performance of some recommended environmentally sustainable policies for ‘good’ office is evaluated as an example and compared with the existing offices of Hong Kong. The probable IEQ in offices of Hong Kong are determined by the Monte-Carlo simulations from recent surveyed studies reported. Among the existing office stock, results have shown that in offices which are renovated to the good IEQ criteria recommended by some policies have experienced some changes of IEQ acceptance and hence the IEQ benchmarking values. The proposed star rating system would serve as a quantitative measure of IEQ for air-conditioned office environment in Hong Kong and given selected model parameters, it would be a useful reference for similar environment where the evaluation of an occupant is expected.

Further Information:

Hui PS, Mui KW, Cheung CT, Wong LT, 2010. Simulations for IEQ benchmarks for air-conditioned offices of Hong Kong, Liaoning-Hong Kong Joint Symposium 2010 on Low Carbon Building Technology - Challenges & Opportunities, 2-3 July, Dalian, China, pp. 49-55.