Aguilar, A J; de la Hoz-Torres, M L; Oltra-Nieto, L; Ruiz, D P and Martínez-Aires, M D (2022) Impact of COVID-19 protocols on IEQ and students' perception within educational buildings in southern Spain. Building Research & Information, 50(7), pp. 755-770. ISSN 0961-3218
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the fact that air quality is essential in buildings. In the case of educational buildings, teaching activities were moved to an online format during the 2020/2021 academic year, with only activities such as exams remaining face-to-face. This strategy required the development of protocols to ensure that classrooms were safe spaces. This study assesses the impact of these protocols in the indoor environmental conditions of educational buildings in Southern Spain. For this purpose, a measurement campaign was carried out at the Fuentenueva Campus of the University of Granada. The results show that the protocols have guaranteed effective ventilation. However, other indoor environmental variables have also been affected, including the satisfaction of users during exams due to temperature, relative humidity (RH) and noise. The highest levels of satisfaction were related to indoor lighting, while the highest levels of dissatisfaction were related to the indoor thermal environment. Among the main causes of dissatisfaction were draughts and outdoor noise, directly related to natural ventilation protocols during the pandemic. Based on these findings, current pandemic protocols should be revised and redesigned to minimize the impact on student satisfaction and perceived learning performance from the identified environmental sources in this research.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | building management; educational buildings; ieq monitoring; indoor environmental quality; natural ventilation; occupants' satisfaction |
| Index terms: | Spain, satisfaction, pandemic, thermal environment, indoor environmental quality, air quality, monitoring, ventilation, face, strategy, educational building, building management, COVID-19, environmental conditions, relative humidity, natural ventilation, classroom, student satisfaction |
| Subjects: | psychology, environmental science, project delivery, construction type, air quality, control systems, climate science, professions and roles, environmental engineering, environmental health, management, health risk and incident analysis, Geography |
| Topics: | Site Management, Organizational Design, Education, Sustainability, Construction Technology, Health and Safety, Business Strategy, Engineering Principles, Geographical Context, Project Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 2 PC |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here