Conference Agenda

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected our society and the economy on an unprecedented global scale; however, viral and bacterial respiratory infections have always been a major cause of morbidity and mortality in countries around the world. While much has been done to understand the transmission of respiratory infections, little of this knowledge has been applied to buildings systems to combat it and to create spaces filled with clean indoor air. We hardly know how to address, let alone manage, the many-faced complexity of indoor atmospheric systems so they will support wellbeing! Therefore, as a society, we must aim at expanding scientific knowledge and develop practical tools to improve national and global resilience of all indoor environments against airborne transmission of respiratory infections. There are challenging obstacles to this goal. For example, current systems and associated industries are well established and are so far reluctant to change; building systems are already a high economic and environmental burden; and “fresh” outside air, which typically replaces indoor air contaminated by indoor sources including the occupants, may be polluted by traffic emissions or wildfire smoke. The engineering of building systems that support clean indoor air requires energy, however, we must not increase energy consumption in the building sector, which already represents a large fraction of total energy consumption; we must design better systems that are energy efficient and maintain clean indoor air. These challenges require innovative solutions forged through new scientific research and technology development with influential industry partners. How can we do this to increase our resilience against pandemic threats by applying science to address the complexity of indoor environments? The Forum will focus at several specific questions of this big topic, including:

· What are the key issues when a society meet a biological threat that have a potential to cause pandemic diseases?

· What or which features of them makes the virus or bacteria dangerous for our societies?

· On which conditions they are developed and what are the key players or circumstances to elevate some organisms as pandemic causing ones?

· How they are spread in indoor environments?

· What are mitigation actions to control the disease transmission?

· How to evaluate the risks for people, for normal life, for working life and finally the society?