Recent studies have shown that both personal and building-related factors may affect the health and comfort of occupants in their homes. It is also known that people differ in their needs and can therefore respond differently to these stressors. Therefore, based on the large database from the survey conducted yearly from 2016 to 2020 among the first-year students of the faculty of Architecture and the Built environment at the Delft University of Technology, this study aimed to explore the associations between self-reported rhinitis/stuffy nose/migraine/headache, and the indoor environment of the students' homes, taking into account potential confounders and profiles. Two-steps cluster analysis resulted in three profiles of students based on their IEQ-related perceptions: Cluster 1 with the highest reported percentage of symptoms and the lowest reported percentage of diseases; Cluster 2 with moderate reported symptoms and diseases; and Cluster 3 with the lowest percentage of reported symptoms and the highest percentage of reported diseases. Logistic regression modelling showed that risk factors contributing to having rhinitis, stuffy nose, migraine and/or headache, differ per cluster, and showed little overlap with the all-respondents group. Moreover, when there is an overlap, the associated risk factor might increase the risk for one cluster, while for another it decreases the risk, indicating differences in response between the different clusters; and therefore, the importance of clustering instead of considering all respondents as one.@en

Sounds (e.g., human activity, nature, building systems) are one of the indoor environmental stimuli that may have positive and/or negative effects on students’ well-being and performance in educational buildings. Students in educational buildings have individual acoustical preferences and needs as portrayed by occupant-related indicators, for example perception. Acoustical guidelines for educational buildings are generally focused on acoustical performance in terms of dose-related (e.g., sound pressure level) and building-related indicators (e.g., sound absorbing walls), while occupant-related indicators (e.g., heart rate) are rarely mentioned. In contrast, previous studies such as indoor soundscape studies, do take into consideration occupant-related indicators, including physiological and psychological. Therefore, this study aimed at summarizing these indicators in a comprehensive overview that is essential for investigating the students’ acoustical preferences and needs in educational buildings. A literature review of relevant studies in the domain of indoor acoustics and soundscape was carried out. A number of key indicators (occupant-related, dose-related, building-related) and methods that are fundamental to be considered were identified. Only in a few studies, students’ acoustical preferences and needs were investigated by considering occupant-related indicators (both physiological and psychological). In addition, dose-related indicators of other indoor environmental quality (IEQ) factors and building-related indicators were rarely taken into account in previous studies.

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of ventilation for ensuring occupants’ health was widely stressed, especially for densely occupied places such as schools (Ding et al, 2022). Correspondingly, new protocols of ventilation were implemented in school buildings among many countries and regions. In the Netherlands, school classrooms were first required to keep the windows and doors open, and later after a national lockdown more stringent measures such as reducing student occupancy were introduced. Previous studies have already shown that the ventilation in a large portion of school classrooms did not meet the requirement (National Ventilation Coordination Team, 2020). However, what are the actual effects of the COVID-19 measures on ventilation in school classrooms remains unclear. This study aims to investigate 1) the ventilation sufficiency, and 2) the ventilation-related effects of temporary pandemic control and prevention measures in school classrooms under the COVID-19 pandemic.@en

Introduction: Our aim was to gain insight into the effect of COVID-19 measures on SARS-CoV-2 incidence in secondary schools and the association with classroom CO ₂ concentration and airborne contamination. Methods: Between October 2020—June 2021, 18 schools weekly reported SARS-CoV-2 incidence and completed surveys on school-initiated COVID-19 measures (e.g. improving hygiene or minimizing contacts). CO ₂ was measured in occupied classrooms twice, and SARS-CoV-2 air contamination longitudinally using electrostatic dust collectors (EDC) and analyzed using RT-qPCR. National COVID-19 policy measures varied during pre-lockdown, lockdown and post-lockdown periods. During the entire study, schools were recommended to improve ventilation. SARS-CoV-2 incidence rate ratios (IRR) were estimated by Generalized Estimating Equation (GEE) models. Results: During 18 weeks follow-up (range: 10–22) SARS-CoV-2 school-incidence decreased during national lockdown (adjusted IRR: 0.41, 95%CI: 0.21–0.80) and post-lockdown (IRR: 0.60, 0.39–0.93) compared to pre-lockdown. School-initiated COVID-19 measures had no additional effect. Pre-lockdown, IRRs per 10% increase in time CO ₂ exceeded 400, 550 and 800 ppm above outdoor level respectively, were 1.08 (1.00–1.16), 1.10 (1.02–1.19), and 1.08 (0.95–1.22). Post-lockdown, CO _2-concentrations were considerably lower and not associated with SARS-CoV-2 incidence. No SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected in any of the EDC samples. Conclusion: During a period with low SARS-CoV-2 population immunity and increased attention to ventilation, with CO ₂ levels most of the time below acceptable thresholds, only the national policy during and post-lockdown of reduced class-occupancy, stringent quarantine, and contact testing reduced SARS-CoV-2 incidence in Dutch secondary schools. Widespread SARS-CoV-2 air contamination could not be demonstrated in schools under the prevailing conditions during the study.

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of ventilation was widely stressed and new protocols of ventilation were implemented in school buildings worldwide. In the Netherlands, schools were recommended to keep the windows and doors open, and after a national lockdown more stringent measures such as reduction of occupancy were introduced. In this study, the actual effects of such measures on ventilation and thermal conditions were investigated in 31 classrooms of 11 Dutch secondary schools, by monitoring the indoor and outdoorCO2 concentration and air temperature, both before and after the lockdown. Ventilation rates were calculated using the steady-state method. Pre-lockdown, with an average occupancy of 17 students, in 42% of the classrooms the CO2 concentration exceeded the upper limit of the Dutch national guidelines (800 ppm above outdoors),while 13% had a ventilation rate per person (VRp) lower than the minimum requirement (6 l/s/p). Post lockdown, the indoor CO2 concentration decreased significantly while for ventilation rates significant increase was only found in VRp, mainly caused by the decrease in occupancy (average 10 students). The total ventilation rate per classrooms, mainly induced by opening windows and doors, did not change significantly. Meanwhile, according to the Dutch national guidelines, thermal conditions in the classrooms were not satisfying, both pre and post-lockdown. While opening windows and doors cannot achieve the required indoor environmental quality at all times, reducing occupancy might not be feasible for immediate implementation. Hence, more controllable and flexible ways for improving indoor air quality and thermal comfort in classrooms are needed.@en

Airborne transmission of small respiratory droplets (i.e., aerosols) is one of the dominant transmission routes of pathogens of several contagious respiratory diseases, which mainly takes place between occupants when sharing indoor spaces. The important role of ventilation in airborne infection control has been extensively discussed in previous studies, yet little attention was paid to the situation in school classrooms, where children spend long hours every day. A literature study was conducted to identify the existing ventilation strategies of school classrooms, to assess their adequacy of minimizing infectious aerosols, and to seek further improvement. It is concluded that school classrooms are usually equipped with natural ventilation or mixing mechanical ventilation, which are not fully capable to deal with both long-range and short-range airborne transmissions. In general, the required ventilation designs, including both ventilation rates and air distribution patterns, are still unclear. Current standards and guidelines of ventilation in school classrooms mainly focus on perceived air quality, while the available ventilation in many schools already fail to meet those criteria, leading to poor indoor air quality (IAQ). New ways of ventilation are needed in school classrooms, where the design should be shifted from comfort-based to health-based. Personalized ventilation systems have shown the potential in protecting occupants from aerosols generated within short-range contact and improving local IAQ, which can be used to compensate the existing ventilation regimes. However, more studies are still needed before such new ventilation methods can be applied to children in school classrooms.

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Airborne transmission has been confirmed as one of three principal ways of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. To reduce the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 indoors, understanding the distribution of respiratory droplets (or aerosols) present in human breath seems therefore important. To study whether the CO2 concentration can be used as a proxy for the number of exhaled particles present in an occupied space, the distribution of particles with different diameters (0.3, 0.5, 1.0, 2.5, 5.0 and 10 ?m) and CO2 concentrations were monitored in a classroom setting with six healthy subjects. Additionally, numbers of particles with the same sizes were measured in the breath of the same six healthy subjects separately. Results showed that (1) on the contrary to CO2, the main source of indoor particles came from outdoor air, and not from occupants; (2) the impacts of ventilation regimes on indoor particle numbers were different to the impacts on CO2 concentrations; and (3) almost no significant relationship between the number of indoor particles and CO2 concentration was observed. Based on these results, this study could therefore not conclude that the CO2 concentration in a classroom can be used as a proxy for the number of exhaled particles by the occupants.@en

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the ventilation of school buildings has attracted considerable attention from the general public and researchers. However, guidance to assess the ventilation performance in classrooms, especially during a pandemic, is still lacking. Therefore, aiming to fill this gap, this study conducted a full-scale laboratory study to monitor the CO2 concentrations at 18 locations in a classroom setting under four different ventilation regimes. Additionally, a field study was carried out in two Dutch secondary schools to monitor the CO2 concentrations in the real classrooms with different ventilation regimes. Both the laboratory and field study findings showed that CO2 concentrations varied a lot between different locations in the same room, especially under natural ventilation conditions. The outcome demonstrates the need of monitoring the CO2 concentration at more than one location in a classroom. Moreover, the monitored CO2 concentration patterns for different ventilation regimes were used to determine the most representative location for CO2 monitoring in classrooms. For naturally ventilated classrooms, the location on the wall opposite to windows and the location on the front wall (nearby the teacher) were recommended. For mechanically ventilated classrooms, one measurement location seemed enough because CO2 was well-mixed under this ventilation regime.@en

Because of COVID-19, the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in sports facilities has been a concern to environmental health practitioners. To develop an overall understanding of the available guidelines and standards and studies performed on IEQ in sports facilities, an extensive literature study was conducted, with the aim of identifying: (1) indicators that are being used to assess IEQ in different sports facilities; (2) indicators that are potentially interesting to be used to assess indoor air, in particular; (3) gaps in knowledge to determine whether sports facilities are safe, healthy and comfortable for people to stay and perform their activities. The outcome indicates that most current standards and previous investigations on IEQ in sports facilities mainly focused on dose-related indicators (such as ventilation rate), while building-related indicators (such as ventilation regime) and occupant-related indicators (such as IEQ preferences) were rarely considered. Little attention is given to the fact that ventilation systems may play an important role in the air quality of the location, and few investigations have been performed on the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. This study recommends more research into both occupant and building-related indicators as well as cross-modal effects between various IEQ factors for developing future standards on sports facilities.@en

The airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in educational buildings has raised concerns during the current COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, a portable fog generator system was designed and assembled to visualise the airflow pattern of exhaled droplets in a classroom. The system consists of five components: medium, fog generator, buffer, pump, and manikin head. The medium was made of glycol and demineralised water, which produced a fog composed of droplets. The fog was produced with the fog generator and passed through a pipe into the buffer for build-up. After accumulation, the fog is pumped through another pipe and is exhaled out of the mouth of the manikin. Experiments were conducted with the portable fog generator system in a simulated classroom under four different ventilation regimes: no ventilation, natural ventilation (open windows and door), mixing ventilation (600 m3/h), and a combination of natural + mixing ventilation. The experiments were recorded with a camera and analysed to determine the horizontal distance of the path taken by the fog and to measure the time it remained visible after exhalation from the mouth. During the experiments, it could be observed with the naked eye that the glycol droplets linger in the air longer than what was captured in the recordings. Not all the droplets were visible with the camera. The recordings showed that with open windows and door (natural ventilation), the droplets travelled the furthest distance (1.8 m) and stayed the longest in the air, while with mixing and natural ventilation, the droplets travelled the shortest (0.5 m) and stayed the least time in the air. These findings confirm that mechanical mixing ventilation increases the removal of aerosols in the air. It is concluded that the portable fog generator system provides a quick method in understanding the duration and distance droplets can travel after being exhaled.@en

During the COVID-19 outbreak, university courses were shifted online and students spent the majority of their time inside their homes. However, staying indoors can affect students’ health due to the exposure to several environmental stressors, such as background noise, and/or inefficient ventilation, and/or insufficient lighting. Previous studies showed that the indoor environmental factors may cause health effects on students (physiological and psychological). Therefore, this research aimed at investigating the differences in students’ health and psychosocial status between before and during COVID-19. An online questionnaire survey was completed by first-year undergraduate university students in March 2019, 2020, and 2021. This questionnaire includes questions about time spent at home, psychosocial status, diseases, and home-related symptoms. The mean number of hours that students spent at home during the weekdays and on weekends were calculated, respectively. Besides, occurrence frequencies of psychosocial statuses were calculated for each year. Furthermore, a statistical analysis, including one-way ANOVA and Chi2, were performed to examine the differences between the three groups in terms of time spent at home, psychosocial statuses, diseases, and home-related symptoms. It is worthwhile to note that students spent significantly more time at home, during the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2021. Another notable result is that students’ mood and emotional states changed significantly over the three years; for example, fewer students reported to be active and inspired in 2021. Moreover, the home-related symptoms, such as headache and tiredness, significantly increased in 2021, compared with the other two years.@en

Several recent studies have demonstrated that ventilation plays an important role in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus that causes COVID-19) in public buildings, such as schools. However, there are no clear rules on how to assess the ventilation performance in classrooms, especially during a pandemic. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to develop guidance to assess the ventilation performance under different ventilation regimes. A full-scale laboratory study was conducted in the Experience room of the SenseLab, where CO2 concentrations were monitored at 19 locations (18 indoors and one outdoors) simultaneously and recorded every 30 seconds by HOBO® CO2 loggers. The experiment was conducted under four different ventilation regimes: ‘600 m3/h mixing’, ‘open windows’, ‘no ventilation’, and ‘open windows and door’. Each regime lasted 50 minutes, which is approximately the duration of one normal lesson at Dutch secondary schools. Six (three males and three females) healthy subjects were invited to participate in this experiment as CO2 sources. Results showed that CO2 concentrations varied significantly between different measurement locations in the same classroom, especially under natural ventilation conditions. This demonstrates the need of monitoring the CO2 concentration, next to outdoors, at more than one location in a classroom. The finding of this study could contribute to a standardized way of monitoring CO2 concentrations and the assessment of ventilation performance of an occupied space.@en

To investigate the sufficiency of ventilation during the COVID-19 pandemic for school children, a field study was conducted in 37 classrooms of 11 Dutch secondary schools between October 2020 and June 2021. All the classrooms were visited twice, before and after a three-month national lockdown, when different measures against COVID-19 were taken by the schools. For each visit, both CO2 concentrations and air temperature were measured during school hours, and detailed information on building/classroom characteristics, occupancy, and COVID-19 measures was collected. Results show that before the lockdown, CO2 concentrations in most classrooms exceeded the threshold levels of the Dutch Fresh Schools guidelines. The significantly lower CO2 concentrations measured after the lockdown, however, were mainly due to the decreased occupancy. Moreover, with windows and doors always being opened on purpose, the performance of different ventilation regimes could not be compared, while such behaviour may also lead to thermal discomfort for school children.@en

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are quintessentially useful for performance evaluation, but a set of pragmatic KPIs for holistic evaluation of retrofits for commercial buildings is hitherto unavailable. This study was conducted to address this issue. Built upon the findings of a systematic literature review and a focus group meeting in the earlier stages of the study, a questionnaire survey covering 19 KPIs for environmental (embracing energy), economic, health and safety, and users’ perspective evaluations of building retrofits was developed. Data of the survey, collected from facility management (FM) practitioners in Hong Kong, underwent a series of statistical analyses, including Kruskal–Wallis H test, Mann–Whitney U test, and Spearman Rank Correlation. The analysis results revealed the levels of importance of KPIs perceived by different groups of FM practitioners and the rankings of KPIs. Based upon these results, eight KPIs were shortlisted, which are energy savings, payback period, investment cost, actual-to-target ratio of the number of statutory orders removed, actual-to-target ratio of the number of accidents reduced, target indoor air temperature, target indoor air quality (IAQ) class, and target workplane illuminance. These KPIs serve as keystones for further development of an analytic evaluation scheme for commercial building retrofit performance assessment. The methodology of this study can also serve as a reference for similar KPI studies in other research domains@en

Under current pandemic of COVID-19, children are still spending long hours in school classrooms every day. A literature study is therefore conducted to investigate the current ventilation strategies used in schools and assess their performance of controlling contagious respiratory diseases in the indoor environment, and also to seek for future solutions. Research papers, reports and standards relevant to school ventilation, airborne transmission and complementary air distribution methods are reviewed. It is concluded that schools usually have natural ventilation (NV) or mechanical ventilation (MV), however the overall indoor air quality is not ideal. Both NV and MV can reduce the airborne transmission of respiratory droplets efficiently when designed, operated, and maintained properly, yet schools are in shortage of informative standards and guidance. Personalized ventilation (PV) has a promising potential in protecting occupants from local indoor air contaminants, yet further studies are needed before PV can be applied to children in classrooms.@en

Next to personal, psychosocial and physiological aspects, environmental aspects of homes may affect the health and comfort of their occupants. This study aimed to investigate the multifactorial character of both rhinitis and headaches among five groups of students from universities in five different cities: Taichung (Taiwan), Concepcion (Chile), Paramaribo (Suriname), Beijing (China) and Delft (The Netherlands). Among the students studied, 18% declared having suffered from rhinitis in the last 12 months, and 30% from headaches in the last 3 months. Self-reported characteristics of 682 students and their homes were linked to self-reported rhinitis and headaches. Logistic regression modelling was applied to explore relations between building-related factors and rhinitis, and between building-related factors and headaches. After full adjustment, the regression model for both rhinitis and headaches confirmed their multifactorial character. While personal-related factors family rhinitis and age were associated with rhinitis, negative events and PANAS negative were with headaches. Biological pollutants (caused by pets) were associated both with rhinitis and headaches; chemical pollutants, caused by open bookshelves and lack of sweeping floors, were associated with rhinitis. The study concludes that the identified risk factors seemed independent of season or climate region.@en

High efficiency air filtration has been suggested to reduce airborne transmission of ‘infectious’ aerosols. In this study the ‘air cleaning’ effect as well as the effect on sound and air velocity (draught risk) of a mobile High-Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filter system was tested for different settings and positions in the Experience room of the SenseLab. From both the noise assessments by a panel of subjects and sound monitoring it was concluded that the mobile HEPA filter system causes an unacceptable background sound level in the tested classroom setting (Experience room). With respect to the air velocity measurements and draught rating calculations, it was concluded that both depend on the position and the setting of the HEPA filter system as well as on the position and height of the measurements. For the removal of aerosols simulated by air-filled soap bubbles in front of the subject, the mobile HEPA filter system performed better as compared to the ‘No ventilation’ regime, for all settings and both positions, and for some settings, even better than all the tested mixing ventilation regimes. The use of a mobile HEPA filter system seems a good additional measure when only natural ventilation options are available. Future research should focus on rooms of different sizes or shapes, as this may also play a role in the filter's performance, noise and draught effects.@en

A recently published simulation-based study has demonstrated the effect of an individually controlled noise-reducing device (ICND) on improving acoustic quality in classrooms. As a follow-up research, this current study aims to develop a real ICND and test it with its target users-- primary school children. The prototype developed in this study looks like a canopy hanging above a desk, was selected and prototyped. It has two modes, i.e. open and closed, and can be easily changed by a remote controller. With this device, school children can control their local acoustic environment by themselves. More than 200 primary school children have been invited to test two prototypes of this device in the acoustical chamber of the SenseLab. The results showed that 83% of the children liked this device and 61% of them wanted to have it in their own classroom. However, since this is a prototype, there is still room for improvement. Based on the children’s feedback, several suggestions for future modifications have been summarized.@en

Previous studies indicate that acoustic improvements at classroom-level, such as using ceiling panels, do not work well to solve noise problems in classrooms. Therefore, this study introduced a new way – individual control – to improve classroom acoustics. The acoustic effect of five different classroom settings is simulated: two individual-level acoustic improvement settings (“Single-sided canopies” and “Double-sided canopies”), two classroom-level acoustic improvement settings (“Half-ceiling” and “Full-ceiling”), and one “Control” setting. The simulation was accomplished with Computer Aided Theatre Technique (CATT-Acoustic™), which is a ray-tracing-based room acoustics prediction software package. According to the two main ways of using classrooms (instruction and self-study), the simulations were run for two situations: instruction situation and self-study situation, and the Lombard Effect was taken into consideration in the self-study situation. The results showed that in both situations, all of these improvement settings, compared with the “Control” setting, could shorten the reverberation time and increase the speech transmission index, and the improvements caused by the individually controlled canopies were more obvious than caused by the ceiling panels. Additionally, in the instruction situation, the individual-level improvements could increase the sound pressure level of the teacher's speech, while in the self-study situation, the individual-level improvements could decrease the sound pressure level of other children's talk. In the future, it is recommended to produce and test different individually controlled devices in a lab or real classroom to verify these results.

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Literature shows that both building systems and occupants’ behaviour contribute to the amount of energy used to create a comfortable indoor environment. To determine possible relationships, energy consumption of nine school buildings was studied in relation to identified building characteristics, self-reported frequency of teachers’ actions, and (perceived and measured) indoor environmental quality (IEQ) of the school children in the classrooms studied. These schools were located in different areas in the Netherlands, and their yearly energy consumption differed a lot. Results demonstrated significant relationships of electrical energy consumption with lighting distribution in classrooms and the frequency of teachers’ light switch behaviour: the higher the measured illuminance in the classrooms, the more electricity was used in the school building. The more electricity was used, the more children complained about the IEQ in their classrooms; and the more frequently the teachers turned on the light, the less electricity the schools consumed. It was concluded that stimulating teachers to be more active in controlling the light might lead to energy saving, but a larger sample of schools with more variation in buildings systems is required to confirm this.@en