Strategy and background for adaptive thermal comfort in low energy buildings - participation in IEA-EBC Annex 69

The research covers the following four work packages:
1) Establishment of a worldwide database of thermal comfort exposures and responses.
This work package focuses on combining existing data and generating new data that nationally and internationally represent occupant exposures and perceptions in current low-energy and traditional building types.
2) Thermal environment criteria based on the adaptive comfort concept
Analyses of the database generated under 1) will be used to specify appropriate ranges of indoor environmental variables, based on the adaptive concept. The results will supplement the currently used indoor thermal environment criteria, which were based mostly on deterministic thermal comfort theory.
3) Passive building design strategies to achieve thermal comfort with low energy consumption
Best practices of building design with passive strategies and the relationship to thermal adaptation will be studied. This activity will provide suggestions to building designers on how to use passive design methods to achieve thermal comfort in an “adaptive” way.
4) New cooling and heating devices
Considerable attention has been dedicated to the study of low temperature heating, high temperature cooling and of systems for individual control of microenvironments. In this activity we wiII continue with new and compile existing research to prepare industry guidelines for design and operation of such systems.