An international Round Robin Test in test rooms: moving forward together to understand human-building interactions

Test room experiments allow to study human-building interactions under controlled environmental boundaries. Differences in experimental design, methods, and contextual variables specific to the location and test room features, result in experimental outcomes that are difficult to generalize and compare. This paper presents an international Round Robin Test activity consisting in the replication of the same procedure in different test rooms worldwide to capture contextual variables effects on human-centric studies and to deepen multi-domain human comfort topics. The campaign focused on the hue-heat hypothesis and investigated the effect of coloured electric-light on human thermal responses (both perceptual and physiological) with the aim of (i) analysing the existence of cross-effects between visual and thermal comfort domains and (ii) correlating physiological signals variations to different testing conditions. Overall, 76 subjects were involved in four laboratories during a summer campaign. Each subject was exposed to a controlled and fixed thermal environment while varying three lighting conditions throughout a single test. No significant crossed effects were verified. The same procedure will be repeated in winter to account for seasonal variability and identify new research questions in the framework of this promising cooperation that will be extended to a broader network of facilities.