Current trajectories and new challenges for visual comfort assessment in building design and operation : a critical review

Blanco Cadena, Juan Diego (author), Poli, Tiziana (author), Košir, Mitja (author), Lobaccaro, Gabriele (author), Mainini, Andrea Giovanni (author), Speroni, Alberto (author)

Visual comfort can affect building occupants’ behaviour, productivity and health. It is highly dependent on the occupant and how they perform a task indoors. In that regard, an occupant centred approach is more suitable for evaluating the lighting perception of the indoor environment. Nevertheless, the process of rating and estimating the visual comfort makes a limited distinction between physiological differences (e.g., ageing eye, light sensitivity), field of view, and personal preferences, which have been proven to influence the occupants’ lighting needs to complete their tasks. Such features were not considered while establishing the visually comfortable conditions; perhaps due to the challenge of coupling the assumptions made during building design to the performance indicators monitored during building operation. This work focuses on reviewing literature findings on how the common design approach deviates from real building performance, particularly failing to prevent visual disturbances that can trigger the inefficient operation of building systems. Additionally, it is highlighted that redesigned visual comfort assessment methods and metrics are required to bridge the gap between the lighting environment ratings computed and surveyed. One possibility is to consider such physiological features that induce lighting experiences. Finally, it was deducted that it is important to target the occupants’ eye response to calibrate limit thresholds, propose occupant profiling, and that it is convenient to continuously monitor the occupants’ perception of indoor lighting conditions.

• Language: English
• Keywords: civil engineering, visual comfort, lighting, daylight, user centred design, modeling, monitoring
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.02 - Review Article
• Organization: FGG - Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2022
• Number of pages: 27 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 12, iss. 6, art. 3018
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-136013
• UDC: 697
• ISSN on article: 2076-3417
• DOI: 10.3390/app12063018
• COBISS.SI-ID: 102334211
• Publication date in RUL: 06.04.2022

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Applied sciences
• Shortened title: Appl. sci.
• Publisher: MDPI
• ISSN: 2076-3417
• COBISS.SI-ID: 522979353

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.
• Licensing start date: 16.03.2022

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: gradbeništvo, vizualno udobje, osvetljenost, dnevna svetloba, na uporabnika osredotočeno načrtovanje, modeliranje, spremljanje