This study explores indoor monitoring and building simulation to investigate relationships between space standards (i.e., the total floor area) and indoor environmental conditions in sustainable buildings. The research investigates six occupied spaces in different sustainable buildings constructed with mass timber products. The study considered the monitoring and actual energy consumption data to validate the simulated results. The study also considered thermal comfort surveys conducted during the field studies to assess occupants’ comfort and satisfaction. The monitoring was conducted for some weeks during the summer months, while the simulated results for the warm period (May to September) were generated and analyzed. The study noted stronger correlations between indoor and outdoor environmental conditions of spaces with lesser floor areas than in the bigger spaces. Elevated indoor environmental conditions are noted in the spaces with lesser floor areas than the bigger ones. The spaces with lesser floor areas require continuous cooling through natural ventilation or mechanical means in the summer months than spaces with larger floor areas; therefore, increasing the overall energy costs in warm seasons. The research identified that space standards are critical and can enhance indoor environmental conditions and the overall well-being of occupants within the thermal environment. The investigation noted that occupants in lesser floor areas may interact and use control more frequently than people in other spaces. The research identified that indoor environmental conditions, comfort, and space standards are interrelated. The study recommends various designers, planners, policymakers, building codes experts, stakeholders, etc., consider continuously reviewing the importance of space standards in the design of buildings and other facilities to enhance indoor environmental conditions, occupants’ comfort, and overall well-being of users within the indoor thermal environment.

Thermal comfort is a key aspect of indoor environmental quality in buildings, affecting the well-being, health, and efficiency of occupants. In the era of sustainable construction, optimal heating system design and effective control of microclimatic conditions are becoming increasingly important.

The aim of this study is to compare the impact of two types of surface heating – floor and wall heating – and application of solar shading on the perception of thermal comfort in indoor spaces. Experimental studies were conducted in two comparable laboratory rooms, one equipped with external venetian blinds, while the other had no solar shading. In both rooms, sensors were placed at three heights: 0.1 m, 1.1 m, and 1.7 m to record microclimate parameters. The measurements included, among others, air temperature, relative humidity, and air movement velocity. Thermal comfort was evaluated using the PMV (Predicted Mean Vote) and PPD (Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfied) indices, which are widely used indicators of indoor environmental quality.

The obtained results allowed for the assessment of the impact of both heating systems on temperature distribution uniformity, microclimatic condition stability, and thermal comfort. Additionally, the analysis of the effect of blinds provided valuable insights into the effectiveness of thermal condition control in surface-heated spaces. The findings of this study may contribute to optimizing HVAC systems in residential and commercial buildings, improving occupant comfort and energy efficiency.

The combined effect of urban heat island and climate change phenomena, such as heat waves, is responsible for the generation of atypical and extreme microclimatic conditions in several large settlements in the Alpine territory, in particular in the hottest months of the year. Considering that most of the local building stock is composed of naturally ventilated buildings and is not equipped with cooling systems, high temperatures can be often observed in many buildings, such as offices, characterized by higher people densities and internal gains compared to the residential ones. Although passive mitigation strategies are generally implemented, they fail to solve the overheating issues in case of severe climate solicitation, pushing towards the necessary adoption of active cooling systems.

When it comes to public buildings, however, local governments and authorities often lack funding necessary for deep retrofitting and installation of centralized air-conditioning systems. In such scenario, public building managers are forced to rely on simpler solutions, such as chillers and reversible heat pumps for individual environments. Even though such measures still come with new costs for the public administration, in terms of both investment and running costs, the improvement of the indoor environmental conditions can have a significant impact on workers’ wellbeing and task performance, often overlooked in the assessment of their economic convenience.

Given these premises, in this work we combined monitoring data and building performance simulations to optimize the prioritization of installation of new cooling systems in a context of limited available resources. Specifically, we focused on an uninsulated and naturally ventilated office building of the Municipality of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy, involved since 2023 in monitoring campaigns aimed at assessing occupants’ thermal comfort according to subjective and objective methodologies. A model of the building was first developed with EnergyPlus and then calibrated and validated against the monitored profiles of indoor air temperature, collected every 10 minutes in representative offices.

Both subjective monitoring data, such as thermal sensation (TSV) and thermal preference (TPV) votes, and simulation outputs were used as inputs to assess workers’ current and scenario task performance according to different models from the literature. By considering different budgets available for the selected public administration, we defined different scenarios, optimizing the installation of active cooling systems accounting not only for additional costs but also for economic savings brought by higher productivity due to better indoor environmental conditions.

Thermal comfort plays an important role in designing energy-efficient indoor environments. Gender-based differences in thermal perception are crucial to having a better understanding of their thermal condition. Localized heating and cooling systems offer a promising alternative to overcome these differences. These systems can directly regulate skin temperature on specific body parts without changing the whole room’s ambient temperature, leading to improved comfort and significant energy savings. While previous studies primarily focused on overall thermal comfort differences between genders, this study investigates gender-based differences in skin temperature and thermal comfort across different body parts.

Experiments were conducted in an indoor climate test facility. The climate chamber’s surfaces were equipped with hydronic capillary tubes, allowing precise heating and cooling at different temperatures. A total of 45 participants (23 males, 22 females), aged 18 to 35 years with a normal BMI (18.5–25), took part in the study. Participants wore uniform clothing, engaged in office-like tasks at an ambient temperature of 25.5°C for 210 minutes. Skin temperatures were continuously measured with iButton sensors, and local and overall sensation and comfort were recorded through detailed questionnaires.

The findings reveal significant gender-based differences in mean local skin temperatures when local thermal sensation is near neutral, particularly in extremities such as the hands, feet, and lower limbs, where female participants exhibited lower skin temperatures. There are also significant differences between mean local comfort of male and female participants. Males showed a wider range of comfort levels. Effect size analysis revealed that the chest, foot, and leg exhibited large effect sizes, indicating substantial gender-based differences in these regions.

These differences highlight the need for personalized thermal control strategies to enhance indoor climate management. The insights gained from this study can contribute to refining thermal comfort models and optimizing HVAC systems to create more inclusive and adaptable indoor environments.

Skin temperature is commonly considered as the primary quantitative indicator of thermal sensation and thermal comfort. However, the patterns of variation in local skin temperature under different environmental conditions and corresponding thermal sensations remain unclear. In this study, at an indoor air temperature of 22.7 °C, cool, neutral, and warm conditions were created by changing the subjects’ clothing insulation to 0.53 clo, 0.83 clo, and 2.53 clo, respectively. The local skin temperatures of 15 body sites were measured in 20 subjects, and their thermal sensations were inquired. The results showed that as the environmental condition changed from cool to warm, the local skin temperatures increased for most body parts. However, the temperatures of the forehead and instep rose from cool to neutral (2.1 °C and 1.94 °C, respectively), but remained almost constant from neutral to warm (−0.03 °C and −0.02 °C, respectively). The core body regions (e.g., chest and abdomen) were always warmer than the limbs. When thermal sensation vote (TSV) changed from −2 to 2, the lower arm (3.87 °C) and the upper arm (3.43 °C) exhibited the largest temperature variation, while the temperatures of the forehead, abdomen, and thighs remained relatively stable. Meanwhile, the local skin temperatures at the lower arm (0.761), scapular (0.618), and wrist (0.600) had high correlations with TSV. This study helps to enhance the understanding of the interactions between surface temperatures of different body parts and the thermal environment, and provide reference for the selection of skin temperature measurement sites in thermal sensation prediction.

The core objective of constructing and operating buildings is arguably the provision of healthy and comfortable indoor-environmental conditions for human occupancy. Hence, a key source of information regarding the buildings' quality is occupants' level of satisfaction with indoor-environmental quality (IEQ). In the last decades, multiple methods, models, and tools have been applied to establish an empirically-based understanding of proper IEQ conditions for human occupancy. These include, prominently, comfort theories that provide the basis and reasoning for various IEQ-related recommendations, guidelines, and mandates. Comfort models are typically developed for specific (individual) domains, and the requirements they imply are likewise domain-specific. Common domains in the IEQ field comprise thermal, visual, and acoustic comfort as well as indoor air quality. More recently, there have been research efforts to investigate the combined effects of stimuli from these domains, which more realistically represent actual exposure situations in actual indoor-environmental settings. In this context, the present contribution pursues the following two research questions: i) What is the relationship between occupants' evaluation of individual (domain-specific) dimensions of IEQ versus their evaluation of the overall IEQ conditions? ii) Is it possible to predict occupants' aggregate perception of IEQ as a unified experience based on their evaluations of the purported domain-specific constituents of IEQ? To treat these questions, the hypothesis is explored, that the aggregate subjective IEQ assessment may be derived from domain-specific evaluations in terms of weighting-based mathematical formalism. Moreover, the hypothesis is subjected to a demonstrative testing exercise with the aid of empirical data collected in the course of experiments involving human participants in an office setting. The results facilitate an initial valuation of this hypothesis and its potential practical utility in view of specification of adequate indoor-environmental conditions.