Rehva Guide No 6 - Indoor Climate and Productivity in Offices - states as its main purpose to establish quantitative relationships of indoor environmental aspects with performance and sickness absenteeism. The following relationships were established: temperature with performance, ventilation with performance, perceived indoor air quality with performance and ventilation with sickness absenteeism. The purpose of this paper is to establish what in practice are, or probably are, the most effective measures to increase performance and decrease absenteeism, given the total of the presently available evidence. We argue that robust measures, like avoidance of indoor air pollution sources, minimizing external and internal heat load, thermal effective building mass, cellular office layout with shallow plan depth, occupant control of temperature, operable windows and providing for adaptive thermal comfort are more effective in increasing performance and reducing absenteeism than less robust measures like diluting indoor air pollution through increased ventilation, controlling temperature through mechanical cooling and open plan workroom layout combined with deep plan depth..

Background
While the indoor environmental quality of classrooms is a potential issue because it may affect the wellbeing of school children, the relations are still poorly studied. This study aimed to investigate the relations between classroom characteristics and health and comfort of school children.

Material and methods
A questionnaire was distributed among 1311 school children (8–12 years old, average 10) of 54 classrooms at 21 schools in The Netherlands. Additionally, the survey included an inspection of the school and its installations and an inspection of the classrooms surveyed using checklists, and monitoring of some environmental parameters (temperature, relative humidity and CO2 concentration) in the classrooms.

Results
Among the children studied, 87% was bothered by noise, 63% by smells, 42% by sunlight when shining, 35% didn't like the temperature in the classroom (too cold or too warm) and 34% experienced temperature changes. Main diseases reported comprised of allergies (26%), rhinitis (17%), hay fever (16%) and eczema (16%). Health and comfort in non-traditional schools was better than in the traditional schools studied (A non-traditional school is a school in which the way of educating children is different from the traditional way of education, according to a different educational theory). Physical building characteristics of the classrooms studied in the traditional schools were associated with the Classroom Symptom Index (location of school building, heating system, solar devices hampering opening windows or ventilation) and the Classroom Comfort Index (ventilation type, window frame colour, floor material and vacuum cleaning frequency).

Conclusions
Measures to improve acoustical, air, and thermal conditions of children in classrooms are needed. More research is required on the use of different lighting systems and use of different colours in classrooms.

Good indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in classrooms is an essential requirement to ensure children’s comfort and learning performance. However, although in most studies the current situation of the IEQ in classrooms has been investigated, few or no studies have been focused on the way to ameliorate it. Recently, some researchers managed to utilize local control to improve local environment quality, but most of these studies have been focused on offices instead of classrooms. Existing knowledge about how to apply local control of IEQ in the classroom is very limited. This paper presents a summary of knowledge in both fields of IEQ in classrooms and local control. In addition, some issues will be discussed and new problems will be proposed. All of these discussions will illuminate the direction for further research on how to use local control to improve the IEQ in classrooms to facilitate childrens’ health and performance.

An overview is given of recent developments in the use of a system of inducing natural air supply via the façade in the Netherlands. This is followed by a review of the results of measurements from climate chamber experiments of its inducing ventilation performance and detailed insights gained from related experiments of climate chamber measurements for a school and a hospital. Finally, lessons learned from practical experience gained in a newly built office and two schools are outlined. These studies of different systems of natural air supply via the facade are used to inform a scoping review of options for use in the design of new buildings using such systems in the future. Because turbulence is an important comfort-parameter, having a positive as well as negative influence on comfort and with physical principles that are, in relation to a number of parameters, still unknown, the issue of turbulence within such systems is discussed in more detail.

Research has shown that staying indoors is not good for our health. People spend more and more of their time indoors. Therefore, providing a healthy and comfortable indoor environment is very important. The SenseLab will contribute to the understanding of and coping with the indoor environment. Students, teachers, researchers, but also the general public are able to experience and test different combinations of environmental conditions. The SenseLab is built around the four indoor environmental quality (IEQ) factors (air, thermal, light and acoustical quality), including: the experience room, for integrated perception of IEQ, so studying all factors together. And four test chambers, open to the public, where you can take a sniff of materials, feel heat and cold, see how light influences perception and experience how acoustics can be improved. A genuine playground for your senses.

There is a need for reducing dwellings’ energy consumption while maintaining a comfortable and healthy indoor environment. This review was performed to provide a steppingstone for identifying new methods for studying everyday home energy use and comfort. First, an overview of comfort is given as seen from different disciplines, depicting the subjective and multidimensional nature of comfort. This is followed by the biological component of comfort, reflected as an emotional, behavioural, and physiological reaction to environmental stimuli. Subsequently, links between comfort, health, and wellbeing are introduced. The second part of the review focuses on energy and buildings, with the connection between energy and behaviours-detailing possible explanations of performance gaps, and the pathways from energy to health. To conclude, human sensation of comfort is more complex than the perception of thermal, acoustical, visual stimuli, or air quality environment. Comfort is a reaction to the environment that is strongly influenced by cognitive and behavioural processes. Habits and controllability have been identified as paramount in the links between comfort and energy consumption. In this holistic view of comfort linked to health, comfort is referred to as ‘wellbeing’. The first steps for new directions of the study of comfort and energy are presented.

This study is a part of research about improvement of the dwellings which belong to the low-income people in Surakarta Indonesia. It focuses on the discussion about the proper method used to assess thermal comfort of the dwellings and the comfort feeling accepted by the occupants. Consideration is also emphasized on the indoor air quality and health of the people who live in the dwellings. This research is expected to provide a guidance of how to conduct a field-survey of thermal comfort and indoor air quality which can be used by the local government, stakeholders and other researchers in the development process. For this purpose, a pilot survey was conducted, including three steps, i.e., momentary measurements of the indoor/outdoor thermal environment, questionnaires/interviews about thermal sensation, indoor air quality, health and observations and checklist. The results of the pilot survey method were evaluated to be implemented in the final field survey which highlighted on the improvement of the measurement procedures (time planning, equipment, surveyors), interviews/questionnaires and the observation. As conclusions, the method of conducting field survey in the dwellings of the low-income groups must consider the efficiency of the procedures and accuracy of the measurement equipment. The background of the dwelling’s occupants has to be considered as well. Meanwhile, communication with the low-income community must be facilitated using simple local language and supported by pictograms.

A good indoor environment in classrooms is important because school children spend a significant amount of their time at schools and children are more susceptible than adults. It is also clear that a school indoor environment can affect the wellbeing and performance of students but a comfortable and healthy school indoor environment consumes energy. In the last decades, indoor environment optimization and energy efficient measures have been introduced to reduce this problem. However, although those standards are met, the IEQ as experienced by occupants is still not acceptable. Also, even with the implementation of energy efficient measures, energy consumption keeps rising while health seems to decrease. Based on a review of literature, this paper identifies the causes for the discrepancies and future directions of research are proposed. It is concluded that future research should focus on holistic assessment of IEQ factors and take into account students’ needs and influence.

Indoor environment in buildings affects human comfort; however, most literature is aimed at environmental conditions dealing with thermal, acoustical, visual, and air quality parameters. Since a majority of domestic energy consumption is related to water and spatial heating, most research on comfort has focused on its thermal dimension, which in its turn is heavily influenced by physiological aspects while socio-psycho-cultural aspects are often disregarded. Similarly, energy behaviour is researched with a focus on economics and engineering. The link between energy consumption and comfort tends to be bridged by the thermal parameter since: a) heating represents the majority of the consumption and b) people mainly report thermal elements as a theme in home comfort-making, such as clothing, bathing, place temperature, and ventilation. This paper is a literature study aimed at exploring further dimensions of comfort and energy consumption at homes in terms of their interactions with each other and as multidisciplinary subjects. It is suggested that comfort and energy behaviours are more complex than its technicalphysiological parameters and that when studying both topics as multidimensional and interrelating concepts, missing links from other disciplines could be discovered, which can allow for more comfortable and healthy environments, and for more comprehensive strategies for better energy behaviours.

A study was performed to investigate the indoor air quality of ventilation ducts, cut or milled directly in the outside thermal insulation of houses as part of a renovation concept. Measurements and subjective evaluations were conducted to study the impact of the polystyrene ventilation ducts, compared to steel, PVC and wooden ducts, on the air quality. Surface roughness of the inside of the polystyrene ducts seems to influence both the measured and the perceived air quality.

There is a need for making people aware of the importance of indoor environmental quality for their health and comfort. A simple guide to educate yourself was created, together with a questionnaire to make you aware of your own indoor environment. The questionnaire was distributed among four groups of students from three different universities in The Netherlands. The procedure and the first descriptive results are presented. Further analysis will be performed for educational and scientific purposes.

To facilitate a multi-disciplinary education and research program, the ‘Sense lab’, a playground for the senses, is being built, in which single and combinations of environmental conditions can be both experienced and tested.

The thermal comfort level distribution in high-rise residential buildings is seldomly checked in the Netherlands. At building scale, height and orientation were found to be the crucial parameters in the thermal comfort distribution in a regular high-rise residential building. At room scale, privacy and safety were found to be closely related to the use of the natural ventilation system. Based on the findings, different strategies are proposed to improve thermal comfort, concentrating on the summer period.

Building-related symptoms occur more often in office buildings with air conditioning and sealed windows. Avoiding construction of such buildings, therefore, seems advisable. Nevertheless, many new Dutch buildings are air conditioned and sealed. This study consists of the arguments that have been made for continuing to build air-conditioned and sealed buildings and a validity test of those arguments. Some arguments (e.g., outside noise, wind) rightly support the need for mechanical air supply in certain situations. But even then, operable windows with smart design have proved themselves to be applicable and effective. Some arguments in favor of air conditioning and sealed windows appeared to be invalid (e.g., preventing dry air). High heat loads seemed to be the most sound argument in favor of air conditioning. However, a calculation showed that, given the Dutch climate, high indoor temperatures can be avoided without cooling when certain design criteria concerning building characteristics are met. Despite common beliefs, it is quite possible to avoid sealed windows and air conditioning in Dutch office buildings. Note that several factors analyzed in this study are based on the climatic conditions of the Netherlands and may not be valid in other climates.