B096 Office IEQ Benchmark

Calculation of acceptance for indoor environmental quality benchmarks of air-conditioned offices in Hong Kong

Brief:

Assessment of indoor environmental quality (IEQ), as an integral part of a total building performance approach for implementation of environmental policies of energy conservation measures for sustainable building designs and operations, would be used as an environment performance indicator for environmental diagnosis in workplaces to explain reported occupant concerns in comfort, odour and working performance.

This paper, based on a number of environmental parameters of an occupant’s environmental acceptance, illustrates a user-friendly interface for calculating the occupant’s acceptance and compares the relative performance of office IEQ with the database of occupants’ acceptability in air-conditioned offices of Hong Kong. In particular, this model adopted four basic components, namely thermal comfort, indoor air quality, aural and visual comfort for determining the acceptance IEQ. Physical environmental parameters such as air temperature, relative humidity, acoustics, air quality, lighting, ventilation and air distribution are included in the calculation. This model accounts for the occupant’s adaptive response of clothing adjustment for the perceived thermal environment in determining the occupant’s overall IEQ acceptance.

This study presents 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 IEQ evaluation of an occupant is expected.

Further information:

Cheung CT, Mui KW, Hui PS, Wong LT, 2010. Calculation of acceptance for indoor environmental quality benchmarks of air-conditioned offices in Hong Kong, Proceedings of Joint Symposium 2010 on Low Carbon High Performance Buildings, 23 November, Hong Kong, China, pp. 35-38.