Personalised Environmental Monitoring of Building Occupants: Integration of Scalable Technologies

Coulby, Graham (2022) Personalised Environmental Monitoring of Building Occupants: Integration of Scalable Technologies. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

Urbanised societies spend most of their time indoor. These are places to conduct habitual activities that impact across the life course and are generating discussions on the built environment and its interplay with health and wellbeing. To understand the effect buildings and their enclosed spaces have on people/occupants, there is a need to monitor Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) and occupant responses. State-of-the-art monitoring approaches exist, but they have limited utility outside of bespoke scenarios due to their limited pragmatism and large cost. Other emergent technologies exist but questions remain relating to e.g., validity. Other routine/traditional subjective approaches for evaluating building IEQ often negate to account for the experiences of individual occupants, adding to complications. This thesis explores current monitoring IEQ trends, uncovering the needs to make the individual the unit of analysis. Research undertaken explores contemporary needs and shifting trends to pragmatic approaches, localised sensors to provide richer data that could enable a better understanding of environmental and occupant changes. Quantitative measurement of the environmental conditions local to individuals are explored to understand whether spatial density in monitoring can 1) reinforce data pertaining to how building occupants experience indoor conditions and 2) provide additional context to current approaches for data capture, which traditionally focus on qualitative approaches. Through a series of original research this thesis broadly presents the design and development of a multi-modal IEQ monitoring device and a supporting methodological process for monitoring individuals. It identifies that low-cost multi-modal monitoring deployed longitudinally can add significant context to traditional qualitative approaches, with the individual as the unit of analysis. Findings from the thesis present a paradigm shift that could have practical implications for researchers and practitioners, changing the way building performance is assessed and the way its impact on health and wellbeing could be evaluated.

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