Bridging the gap from test rooms to field-tests for human indoor comfort studies: A critical review of the sustainability potential of living laboratories

R. J. Cureau, I. Pigliautile, A. L. Pisello*, M. Bavaresco, C. Berger, G. Chinazzo, Zs Deme Belafi, A. Ghahramani, A. Heydarian, D. Kastner, M. Kong, D. Licina, A. Luna-Navarro, A. Mahdavi, A. Nocente, M. Schweiker, M. Vellei, A. Wang

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

22 Scopus citations

Abstract

Occupants play a key role in determining final building energy consumption. Empirical evidence must support occupants' modelling. Experiments on human responses to Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) are usually performed in test rooms or as in-field monitoring. Between these two approaches, living laboratories, often abbreviated as living labs, represent a valid alternative due to their resemblance to real-world settings. This allows observing actual behaviours while keeping the capability to reliably monitor and control the indoor environment. This work systematically reviewed the available information from 34 living labs for human comfort studies worldwide to define the scope, characteristics, and significance of living labs, for the first time. Most of the reviewed living labs are office environments, and only a few do not involve a university research institution in their operation and management. Most of them are in Europe and the United States, whereas there is a lack of such facilities in other locations and climate zones (e.g., tropics). A larger number of comfort studies in living labs is required to clarify the differences in the knowledge acquired in these experiments compared to in-field and laboratory ones. The review shows that living labs add opportunities for testing and optimizing innovations in human-centric solutions for comfortable green buildings. Through the living labs approach it is possible to holistically capture the influence of IEQ on occupant perception and the related response, to gather data on larger and more diverse groups of people, and to conduct multi-domain comfort studies involving multidisciplinary approaches given their real-life settings.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number102778
JournalEnergy Research and Social Science
Volume92
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 2022

Funding

This review was conducted within the framework of IEA-EBC Annex 79. R.J. Cureau's acknowledgments are due to the PhD school in Energy and Sustainable Development from the University of Perugia (Italy). A.L. Pisello thanks the Italian Ministry of Research for supporting NEXT.COM (Towards the NEXT generation of multiphysics and multidomain environmental COMfort) project (Prin 2017–20172FSCH4). I. Pigliautile thanks the Italian funding programme Fondo Sociale Europeo REACT EU – Programma Operativo Nazionale Ricerca e Innovazione 2014-2020 (D.M. n. 1062 del 10 agosto 2021) for supporting her research in RED-TO-GREEN project. M. Schweiker was supported by a research grant ( 21055 ) by VILLUM FONDEN . Zs. Deme Belafi's work in this paper was supported by the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. This review was conducted within the framework of IEA-EBC Annex 79. R.J. Cureau's acknowledgments are due to the PhD school in Energy and Sustainable Development from the University of Perugia (Italy). A.L. Pisello thanks the Italian Ministry of Research for supporting NEXT.COM (Towards the NEXT generation of multiphysics and multidomain environmental COMfort) project (Prin 2017–20172FSCH4). I. Pigliautile thanks the Italian funding programme Fondo Sociale Europeo REACT EU – Programma Operativo Nazionale Ricerca e Innovazione 2014-2020 (D.M. n. 1062 del 10 agosto 2021) for supporting her research in RED-TO-GREEN project. M. Schweiker was supported by a research grant (21055) by VILLUM FONDEN. Zs. Deme Belafi's work in this paper was supported by the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Keywords

  • Energy efficiency in buildings
  • Human-centric approach
  • Living lab
  • Multi-domain comfort
  • Multidisciplinary research
  • Occupant behaviour

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
  • Nuclear Energy and Engineering
  • Fuel Technology
  • Energy Engineering and Power Technology
  • Social Sciences (miscellaneous)

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