Task 1 - Measurement and Verification of Building Performance Characteristics

Building performance influences energy usage and environmental conditions in indoor environments. Building owners and managers, architects, industry and regulatory agencies confronting concerns regarding unacceptable indoor air quality (IAQ) and other indoor environmental issues are focusing on design, construction, maintenance and remediation solutions for buildings and building systems. This activity results in direct and indirect costs, and it represents a significant challenge to industry, labor and government. Occupant comfort and productivity have gained increasing attention by building owners and managers in comparison with traditional concerns about costs associated with building function and operating efficiency. The lack of integrated building protocols and normative baseline data to assess the relationships between building performance and energy consumption contributes to problems in solving IAQ and other indoor environmental concerns.

The development of integrated building protocols for the measurement and verification of integrated building performance are needed to assist in establishing guidance for building technology and energy issues. These protocols will include the assessments of indoor fungal (mold) contamination and indoor thermal, ventilation and sound issues. The results of these assessments will be correlated with the results of occupant questionnaires that address epidemiological and health issues and occupant reactions to their indoor environments.

This study is designed to:

Develop an integrated building database that contains data from typical commercial and institutional buildings.

Establish an integrated protocol for monitoring buildings in the United States.

Develop and begin a long-term multidimensional study of buildings under various design, construction and handoff procedures and climate zones.

The integrated building protocol will provide data that are currently not available. The indoor building factors that are being investigated have never been formally studied in a comprehensive and systematic manner, and no normative database currently exists for typical commercial and institutional buildings that makes it possible to correlate epidemiological, health and occupant indoor environmental response data to corresponding building design information and related measured microbiological and engineering data. These are necessary to properly assess building performance. The database will be designed so that new data can be easily added to the database as more buildings are investigated as part of future studies. The database will provide normative IAQ and indoor environmental criteria that, when combined with related energy criteria, will make it possible to maximize the efficiencies of modern buildings in terms of design, operation, maintenance, energy, occupant health and occupant satisfaction with their indoor environment.

Task 1 work is being performed by the University of Nevada Las Vegas. The principal investigator is Dr. Linda Stetzenbach. Other team members include Sean Hsieh, Ph.D., Xin Hu, Ph.D. Brian J. Landsberger, Ph.D., Samir F. Moujaes, Ph.D., P.E., Liangcai (Tom) Tan, Ph.D. and Ken Teeters.

Major contributors to this project also are Jim Craner, M.D. and Stu Alderman, both of Verdi Technology Associates.

This task is scheduled to be completed by October of 2005.