Coupling the assessment of indoor environmental quality and cognitive performance in Building Information Modelling with integral indicators

Domjan, Suzana (author), Fink, Rok (author), Medved, Sašo (author)

Nowadays we spend most of time indoors and therefore building planners must provide best possible indoor environmental quality (IEQ) for living and working in the most energy efficient way. While living comfort can be predicted with the set of standardized physical variables, the evaluation of productivity is still not included in building design by default. The aim of the study is to present i) the experimental evaluation of performance of mental work of test subjects (age between 22 and 63 years) at controlled indoor environment in four IEQ domains – thermal, indoor air quality, lighting and noise exposure; ii) the statistical evaluation of three tests of mental work performed by test subjects (d2, arithmetical, Baddeley test), (iii) the method for ranking of IEQ based on physical variables and ranking the impact of physical variables on productivity of mental work as a basis for developing integral single score metric, (iv) a procedure to incorporate the integral single score metrics into dynamic modelling within the selected BIM tool. No statistically significant differences in scores of tests of mental work regarding to the gender and age of test subjects was found, while impact on productivity was found even if indoor environment conditions were maintained within the range of standardized quality classes (I–IV). Case study shown that indoor environmental quality metric significant increases by implementing energy efficiency measures, while smart operation of building technical system is needed to establish high productivity of mental work as well, those justifying the multi-approach of building design.

• Language: English
• Keywords: dynamic modelling of building response, building information modelling, productivity loss, mental work, integral indicators, indoor environmental quality, zero-energy, smart buildings
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FS - Faculty of Mechanical Engineering; ZF - Faculty of Health Sciences
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: 18 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 330, art. 115354
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-166904
• UDC: 620.9:502.12
• ISSN on article: 0378-7788
• DOI: 10.1016/j.enbuild.2025.115354
• COBISS.SI-ID: 224483075
• Publication date in RUL: 30.01.2025

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Energy and buildings
• Shortened title: Energy build.
• Publisher: Elsevier
• ISSN: 0378-7788
• COBISS.SI-ID: 25395200

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Projects

• Funder: ARRS - Slovenian Research Agency
• Project number: P2-0223
• Name: Prenos toplote in snovi