Monitoring and Assessment of Indoor Environmental Conditions after the Implementation of COVID-19-Based Ventilation Strategies in an Educational Building in Southern Spain
Metadatos
Afficher la notice complèteAuteur
Aguilar Aguilera, Antonio Jesús; De la Hoz Torres, María Luisa; Martínez Aires, María Dolores; Ruiz Padillo, Diego PabloEditorial
MDPI
Materia
Indoor environmental quality Buildings Natural ventilation COVID-19 IEQ Educational buildings Construction
Date
2021Referencia bibliográfica
Aguilar, A.J.; de la Hoz-Torres, M.L.; Martínez-Aires, M.D.; Ruiz, D.P. Monitoring and Assessment of Indoor Environmental Conditions after the Implementation of COVID-19-Based Ventilation Strategies in an Educational Building in Southern Spain. Sensors 2021, 21, 7223. https:// doi.org/10.3390/s21217223
Patrocinador
Consejo General de la Arquitectura Técnica (CGATE); State Research Agency (SRA) of Spain and European Regional Development Funds (ERDF) under project PID2019-108761RB-I00.; Junta de Andalucía and European Regional Development Funds under project B-TEP-362-UGR18Résumé
Since students and teachers spend much of their time in educational buildings, it is critical
to provide good levels of indoor environmental quality (IEQ). The current COVID-19 pandemic
has shown that maintaining a good indoor air quality level is an effective measure to control the
transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This study used sensors to monitor key IEQ factors and assess
several natural ventilation scenarios in a classroom of the University of Granada. Subsequently,
the IEQ factors (temperature, relative humidity, CO2 concentration, acoustic environment, and air
velocity) were evaluated for the selected ventilation scenarios in the occupied classroom, and the field
monitoring was carried out in two different assessment periods, winter and summer. The obtained
results show that the CO2 concentration levels were well below the recommended limits. However,
the maintenance of the recommended thermal and acoustic IEQ factors was significantly affected
by the natural ventilation strategies (temperature and relative humidity values were very close to
the outside values, and the background sound pressure level was over 35 dBA during the entire
assessment). The proper measurements and careful selection of the appropriate ventilation scenarios
become of utmost importance to ensure that the ventilation rates required by the health authorities
are achieved.