Publications related to Indoor air quality

A state-of-the-art, systematic review of indoor environmental quality studies in work-from-home settings

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant increase in working from home worldwide, making the workfrom-home (WFH) setting a crucial context for studying the influence of indoor environmental quality (IEQ) on workers' well-being and productivity. A nar ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Overview of the Alaskan Layered Pollution and Chemical Analysis (ALPACA) Field Experiment

Athanasios Nenes, Julia Schmale, Andrea Baccarini, Roman Pohorsky, Sukriti Kapur

The Alaskan Layered Pollution And Chemical Analysis (ALPACA) field experiment was a collaborative study designed to improve understanding of pollution sources and chemical processes during winter (cold climate and low-photochemical activity), to investigat ...

2024

Influence of Ventilation on Formation and Growth of 1-20 nm Particles via Ozone-Human Chemistry

Dusan Licina, Shen Yang, Marouane Merizak, Meixia Zhang

Ozone reaction with human surfaces is an important source of ultrafine particles indoors. However, 1-20 nm particles generated from ozone-human chemistry, which mark the first step of particle formation and growth, remain understudied. Ventilation and indo ...

Amer Chemical Soc2024

Nanocluster aerosol formation via ozone chemistry on worn clothing: Influence of environmental parameters

Dusan Licina, Shen Yang

Nanocluster aerosols (NCA, particles

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2024

What is NExT? A new conceptual model for comfort, satisfaction, health, and well-being in buildings

Dusan Licina

Buildings are designed to respond to functional and regulatory needs, providing comfortable conditions to occupants, offering satisfactory environmental settings, minimising health risks, and enhancing individual and collective quality of life. Although th ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Spatial Modeling for Building Design Evaluation: from Visual Landscape Quality Assessment to Devaluation Risk Estimation

Adam Robert Swietek

Zoning reform is a crucial tool for cities to adapt to contemporary challenges. However, its implementation remains challenging. Property owners, with a vested interest in the value of their neighborhoods, are sensitive to local developments and the potent ...

EPFL2024

Human personal air pollution clouds in a naturally ventilated office during the COVID-19 pandemic

Dusan Licina, Shen Yang, Maria Viviana Gonzalez Serrano, Akila Muthalagu

Personal cloud, termed as the difference in air pollutant concentrations between breathing zone and room sites, represents the bias in approximating personal inhalation exposure that is linked to accuracy of health risk assessment. This study performed a t ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2023

Assessment of personal exposure to particle and gaseous air pollutants in residences and offices

Maria Viviana Gonzalez Serrano

Poor indoor air quality has been associated with health issues and decreased work performance. Personal exposure that takes place both in outdoor and indoor environments is the result of dy-namic processes and complex interactions between people and surrou ...

EPFL2023

Dynamic indoor thermal environment using Reinforcement Learning-based controls: Opportunities and challenges

Dolaana Khovalyg, Arnab Chatterjee

Currently, the indoor thermal environment in many buildings is controlled by conventional control techniques that maintain the indoor temperature within a prescribed deadband. The latest research provides evidence that more dynamic variations of the indoor ...

2023

Assessment of Monitoring Strategies for Inhalation Exposure and Occupancy in Office Environments

Seoyeon Yun

Given people's significant time spent indoors, ensuring good indoor air quality (IAQ) is essential because it significantly influences occupants' health and productivity. Office buildings consume about 50% of commercial building energy and 18% of total bui ...

EPFL2023

Size-resolved inhalation intake fractions for particles released from human activities in residential indoor environments

Dusan Licina, Marouane Merizak

Inhalation exposure to elevated concentrations of airborne particulate matter is a public health concern. Assessment of exposure can be enhanced through better knowledge of source-receptor relationships, which can be characterized through the inhalation in ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2023

Building ventilation and outdoor air pollution: Implications for health, comfort and energy

Evangelos Belias

As humans spend most of their time indoors, indoor air quality (IAQ) significantly impacts their health. In parallel, building ventilation consumes significant energy, contributing to climate change. However, the relationships between the building ventilat ...

EPFL2023

Weather Impacts on Indoor Radon Short-Term Measurements in Switzerland

Joan Rey

Radon is a natural and radioactively well-known carcinogenic indoor air pollutant. Since 2020, a radon short-term proactive methodology has been proposed by Swiss authorities, which aims to evaluate the probability of overpassing the national reference val ...

MDPI2023

Transparent structured conductive coating for applications in smart windows

Jérémy Jacques Antonin Fleury

Solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth for a period of one hour contains more energy than that consumed by mankind over an entire year. Some of this solar energy is already collected by photovoltaic cells to cover the electricity needs of buildi ...

EPFL2023

A new chapter of healthy indoor air: antiviral air treatments

Shannon Christa David

Aerosol transmission remains a major challenge for the control of respiratory viruses. To date, prevention strategies include masks, vaccinations, physical distancing, travel restrictions, and lockdowns. Such measures are effective but come with heavy soci ...

Wiley2023

High concentration of black carbon in northern Pakistan: Characteristics, source apportionment and emission source regions

Arindam Roy

Atmospheric Black Carbon (BC) is one of the absorbing components of solar radiation which potentially affects human health and regional climate. In the current study, BC mass concentrations were regularly observed for pre-monsoon and monsoon seasons using ...

Elsevier2023

DIET Controller: Dynamic Indoor Environment using Deep Reinforcement Learning

Arnab Chatterjee

Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Systems utilize much energy, accounting for 40% of total building energy use. The temperatures in buildings are commonly held within narrow limits, leading to higher energy use. Measurements from office bui ...

EPFL2023

Thermal Conditions in Indoor Environments: Exploring the Reasoning behind Standard-Based Recommendations

Dolaana Khovalyg

Professionals in the building design and operation fields typically look at standards and guidelines as a reliable source of information and guidance with regard to procedural, contractual, and legal scope and requirements that are relevant to accountabili ...

2023

RECA: A Multi-Task Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Recommender System for Co-Optimizing Energy, Comfort and Air Quality in Commercial Buildings

Andrew James Sonta

We present the design and implementation of RECA, a novel human-centric recommender system for co-optimizing energy consumption, comfort and air quality in commercial buildings. Existing works generally optimize these objectives separately, or by only cont ...

Association for Computing Machinery2023

Adequacy of stationary measurements as proxies for residential personal exposure to gaseous and particle air pollutants

Dusan Licina, Maria Viviana Gonzalez Serrano

People are exposed to myriad of airborne pollutants in their homes. Owing to diverse potential sources of air pollution and human activity patterns, accurate assessment of residential exposures is complex. In this study, we explored the relationship betwee ...

ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE2023