ASHRAE Journal:
ASHRAE Journal presents.
Kelly Barraza:
Welcome to ASHRAE Journal Podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Barraza, managing editor. On this episode, we will be discussing occupancy with Amr Suliman and Marina Topouzi. This episode will touch on broader topics of occupancy, like ventilation, environmental quality, resilience, and equality, diversity, and inclusion.
Let's start with some introductions. Marina, what kind of work do you do in this field?
Marina Topouzi:
Hello, everyone. My all research and my work is on buildings, and energy, energy demand, but focusing on how people and users are using our different spaces, different building sectors. I'm looking buildings and users as a system, looking environmental indoor, environmental qualities. Looking the existing building stock, and ways to improve the existing buildings that we have so that they perform better with users. In terms of technical and sociotechnical aspects, in terms of policy, and how to address all these people-centric approaches with the technical challenges we have together.
Amr Suliman:
Yeah. Similar to Marina, also a researcher at the University of Oxford, part of the Environmental Change Institute, looking at occupancy-based research, especially post-pandemic. We've been looking a lot into the world of occupancy post-pandemic, at least from a retrofit perspective, and how this idea of occupancy changed. Obviously, the pandemic kind of forced that change.
My background is mainly quite engineering heavy. I did architectural engineering, with a background in building service engineering, or in the US would be architectural engineering, with my focus more on heating system optimization.
In terms of my history with ASHRAE, I've been involved throughout my studies, mainly through my Master's, Ph.D. And through the UK chapter, from the technical perspective as well as chapter perspective. Held some roles. Young Engineer CCTC, and the presidency as well for a while. And now, I'd like to extend my thanks to Professor Maroud, who was my supervisor there. She's someone who got me involved and growing. Thank you.
Kelly Barraza:
Let's start off with the questions now about the topic. Marina, something that is big right now in the built environment world is the idea of healthy buildings, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. What kind of changes in occupancy have you seen following the pandemic?
Marina Topouzi:
There is more hybrid working or remote working. So people, after the pandemic-as it has been highlighted from some colleagues this morning in a discussion, the pandemic hasn't ended. We still have COVID cases out there. It's something that's a current situation. Not at that level that we experienced it, but it's still there.
What it has changed is the way the buildings are used. We have more people working from home and working remotely. The impact that it has is that it changed the occupancy. There is a lot of buildings that they are not used as they were before COVID. A lot of shifting of the energy and the occupancy on people's households, on home environment.
It has changed also the way we are operating the existing buildings. An example of that is office buildings that they are not fully occupied, but the way we operate them and manage them in terms of energy is exactly the same before pandemics. There isn't that shifting of energy in a new way of operation. That's the main thing.
Another thing that has changed is the way we are discussing the indoor environmental quality in terms of ventilation. We have more demand for ventilation. Previous elements and issues that we had, like sick building syndrome, now is a new thing that we need to address even more with the viruses and the pandemic, post-pandemic. Ventilation has come at a very high top level is something that we need to address.
Kelly Barraza:
Are there any other things, in terms of the pandemic and how it changed your part as researchers, towards things like IEQ? Is there anything else with that?
Marina Topouzi:
There is, in terms of how we understand buildings. There is more demand to understand, to install sensors, to understand the occupancy. Understand the indoor environmental qualities, in terms of air changes, in terms of comfort as well. These are going together. There is a demand to install more sensors to understand specific aspects of indoor environmental quality.
That's what it's a new thing that we need to address more and more. There is more demand to understand the indoor environmental qualities of buildings. What is the capacity, how spaces are occupied, or spaces are not occupied, but they are controlled and manage business as usual, like it was before the pandemic. In that sense, that's something that we need to understand.
But also, in terms of energy demand, we need to understand that shifting of energy on the households. Spaces at office buildings, non-domestic buildings that they are not occupied, suddenly that demand is shifted in the household. How the electricity grid is going to balance, that's another issue that we need to explore, in terms of research.
Kelly Barraza:
How important is an indoor healthy environment for the people inside? How can this aspect of buildings affect individuals health beyond something like COVID or other harmful conditions?
Marina Topouzi:
It's exactly what I mentioned earlier. It's that sick building syndrome that we had that affects people that they are working in a specific space, or are just in a specific space. That you can have headaches, you can have shortage of breath. It's quite an important aspect, the air changes and ventilation, from that point of view. It has a direct impact into health. But even light has an impact into well-being and mental health.
There are all these elements that they are related. It's not have a well-heated space, because it's directly related, or cooled space, because it's directly related with thermal comfort. But there are also other elements like noise, like light, air changes and ventilation, that they are very, very important and have a direct impact into people's health.
Kelly Barraza:
Thank you, Marina.
Let's switch over to a topic that might seem a little more cutting-edge. Something really big in our industry right now is machine learning and AI, artificial intelligence, these tools. Amr, this question is for you. Are these tools being used to optimize buildings for occupancy?
Amr Suliman:
Yes. It's being optimized. You can't really escape machine learning, AI these days anyway. It's been embedded in everything.
However, it's important to raise that AI, machine learning is just a tool. It's function of what you're measuring, the quality of the data that you're measuring. Essentially, it needs to be treated with some degree of caution because it's a function of a quality of the data that you're measuring. That goes back to how you're procuring that data.
For example of indoor air quality, as Marina alluded to earlier, location of sensoring is important. Also, sensors just picks up numbers, it doesn't really pick up what people are feeling as well. You need to have that subjective input from people as well.
To answer the question directly, it is used, however it needs to be treated with extreme caution because it's the function of the data quality that you feed into it.
Kelly Barraza:
What would you say is the hardest thing to analyze and anticipate about occupants in buildings?
Amr Suliman:
The people, really, because they are essentially the dynamic part of the building. A building doesn't really use energy, it's the people that use it. Every aspect of the dynamics of the building goes down to the people. And also, there's these social aspects of what people feel as well.
For example, I could feel much warmer than Marina. This environment might be more comfortable for me than her. That's also important, that needs to be brought into the surface, the underlying reasons behind what is actually happening into the space. That is really quite difficult because at that stage, you are dealing with opinions, preferences, and you're moving away from those technical kind of aspects. This becomes more of a sociotechnical problem . Capturing, in essence, what the people are thinking, feeling is definitely the most difficult part.
Kelly Barraza:
What is the most dynamic component of designing and constructing buildings for IEQ?
Marina Topouzi:
I think it's all of the elements that we mentioned earlier. You need to have a good ventilation, sufficient ventilation. You need to have your comfort, heating and cooling, at the right level. You need to have all the aspects, like light and noise, addressed as well. It's all these components that need to be part.
Of course, there is a part that's related not into services, but it's related into how the space is designed. One of the issues that now we need to take in consideration, especially with that flexibility of working and occupancy between the non-domestic buildings and the domestic buildings, is that we need to have a very different design. Space needs to have zoning of specific areas that are not occupied, so they are not used, so you don't need to have these indoor environmental qualities all the time addressed and in place. It needs addresses a new way of thinking, the design of the buildings. Indoor environmental qualities is one thing, but that needs to go in parallel with a good design, which has very different requirements nowadays.
Amr Suliman:
The other thing to do with this, which, kind of adding to the initial points that Marina mentioned, is that you have a conflict because if you're trying to optimize IEQ, something has to give. What has to give, in most cases, is the energy. Now, what the pandemic IEQ importance raised is that it's no longer just about energy. Net-zero buildings, fantastic. It's a dream, essentially. If it's at the expense of IEQ, is it really working, not working?
I think there's a level of complexity that you need to strike a balance between, and balancing your energy consumption with your IEQ to optimize both of them as much as possible. It becomes a more complicated challenge now.
Kelly Barraza:
How important is occupant-centered data?
Marina Topouzi:
I think Amr said something that a former colleague, Katie Janda said. That, "Buildings alone, they don't use energy. People and buildings are what consumes energy." It's exactly like that.
If we don't understand occupants, unfortunately we don't understand how buildings, what are the needs and the requirements, what are the operational demand and use of our buildings. So it's the key, actually. That's where is the conflict between AI. We might technically understand very well a building. We might have all of the data. But people's behaviors and patterns vary.
The problem with the modeling that we have, for example, is that exactly they are using a default user. They use a default occupant that has some characteristics, some profiles, where we have a plurality of people, of different routines, of different preferences. That is the difficulty. That's what it very important to understand, because that will also help us with the future resilience of how to design resilient buildings for the future. It's not only the weather and the climate change, the weather conditions that they are changing, but it's also how people need to adapt with a building that has a system into these new conditions, weather conditions.
Amr Suliman:
Just to add onto that quickly. Also, with occupants, essentially if you think about it, because again, where we work is a very old university, so they have super old buildings. But humanity changes over time, the nature of the jobs we do changes over time. It's quite common to find buildings that are hundreds of years old. But the time where it was designed, the way humans used buildings was completely different compared to-to what we do today.
Back then, you were more likely to have more of an outdoor kind of activity, because there's no computers, no technology. It's likely that people would be moving around more face-to-face. But now, because of digitalization, humanity is more likely to be indoors. A shift in time, call it just technology, has an impact. That needs to be connected on this occupant-centric data and reflected in our design, so we could have this resilient future moving forward.
The pandemic is an example. Now we're more likely to spend more time at home, compared to before. It's normal for me not to go to the office five days a week. Actually, it's quite unlikely. We had a statistic from, again, just colleges of colleagues from the department, that they find that the average time academics spend on their body was 1.8 days a week. That's quite a striking figure, because during that whole time the body was operating, but they were only there on average 1.8 days a week. That, again, goes back to a change of culture that was forced by the pandemic.
Kelly Barraza:
Do you see data from before and after the pandemic being used to assess occupancy in buildings? Especially if there's another COVID, or something of that nature on the horizon. What's the pulse there?
Marina Topouzi:
I don't think that we got all the learnings that COVID addressed. I don't think that we have prepared our buildings for the next wave, or for something very similar.
We are in an automated business as usual, but there are concerns, and that's the very interesting. At Oxford University, there are different groups, like the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion, the Estates and the Management Group at Oxford University, that they are discussing how they need to increase the air changes for the reason that it has been raised from students and from other groups, that they want to have that security and reassurance that there is a good level of air changes in different rooms and different spaces.
Although the issues are raised from the users, and that's what we need to take forward and address, there isn't, in terms of regulation or standards, something collectively as a strategy that we took forward. Retrofit and refurbishment of existing buildings continues business as usual, without addressing and preparing the buildings. New builds, the same way. There is something that it hasn't been addressed. Even in the design, the zoning that I mentioned earlier, it's not something that you see. There is something that we need to learn and change. We need a new narrative of the way we design buildings. Whether it's of the space, or the indoor environmental qualities, and we are not yet there.
Kelly Barraza:
I know ASHRAE has definitely been active in addressing this. There's so many lessons that we still have to learn from COVID. Last year, we had the landmark standard, ASHRAE Standard 241, Control of Infections Aerosols. Which was, I think, they really fast-tracked that standard last summer to get it published and out. I know it's been a very big hit for ASHRAE. Hopefully, we can just build on that in the future and work with other bodies too, on how to improve and have a more refined strategy to make sure that we keep people inside buildings safe and healthy.
We had talked about resiliency a bit, and weather. There's been a lot in the news about extreme weather changes impacting urban environments. Is there anything specific in the UK, because you're both based in the UK, that you could talk on about that? A little different from across the pond, from here in the US, maybe.
Marina Topouzi:
I think that we are start to addressing is cooling and overheating of the buildings. There is that balance between airtight, we need to have airtight buildings. But at the same time, they need to be breathable, well-ventilated, and they need to addresses issues like cooling. These are things that perhaps we don't have much demand at the moment, but when we are talking about future resilience, are definitely cooling is something that needs to be addressed, in terms of extreme weather conditions.
I don't know if Amr has something else to add on that?
Amr Suliman:
Yeah. Yeah, again, I agree on what Marina is saying. It's definitely a cooling challenge for us. The reason is that our summers are getting warmer, more visibly warmer. It's quite common to hear 30°C temperatures. Which if you ask someone who lived 20 years ago, they'll be like, "This doesn't happen a lot." It's becoming more and more common.
The other thing is that the UK housing stock in general is very old. If you go to London, for example, it's very common to see residential buildings that are 200-years-old-plus. Again, not a time where cooling wasn't even-It was a dream, really. You have to go somewhere to Australia, or wherever, to enjoy some sunshine.
Because of the climate, and again the age of the housing stock and context where it was studied, then the problem naturally becomes amplified. Overhearing for us is quite a big challenge and topic of interest.
Kelly Barraza:
Right. I feel like the similarities that I see in the UK is northern New England, United States, here in the States, where there are a lot of older houses and buildings that don't have HVAC systems. A lot of them here in the South, too. But in the US, we have a lot of HVAC in our houses. Yeah, anyway.
Do you see any other changes coming up for making buildings more resilient against this adverse and unpredictable weather?
Marina Topouzi:
Something that it addresses, but it's not feasible in all situations, is that notion of fabric first. What fabric first is is to ensure that the envelope of the building, the skin of the building, can deal with all these extreme temperatures, low and high temperatures. That is an important element to address overheating of the buildings, but also in the cold conditions as well.
Another element to address that, it's very UK-specific. It is that it's not only that we have an old building stock, it's also that the construction is very poor. The way that some of these buildings are built are very poor, and that's an issue that we find out in retrofit and refurbishment. That it makes it very difficult to improve the fabric very often. They don't have thermal mass, it's a construction that is already very leaky. And in terms of cost-efficiency, it's not very cost-effective to refurbish these buildings. But that's the only solution in terms of carbon emissions. That is something that we need to address.
But another issue is also to increase awareness. Is to increase awareness how people can achieve thermal comfort, for example. How people can achieve indoor environmental qualities, why they need to open the windows to ventilate. Or why they need a ventilation system to help them with that. A lot of the extreme weather conditions require also well-informed users, and increase awareness how to deal with some of these extreme weather conditions.
Kelly Barraza:
Let's talk about equity, diversity, and inclusion. Also can be called equality, diversity, and inclusion. What kind of work or research is being done to protect groups we consider vulnerable against unhealthy conditions in the built environment?
Marina Topouzi:
Our group at Environmental Change Institute with Brenda Boardman has done a lot of work on fuel poverty. That's one aspect of equality, diversity, and inclusion perhaps. But there isn't directly address the indoor environmental quality. It has been addressed in terms of disability, and the way we design spaces, have the right space for wheelchairs, and so on. But we don't have addressed other issues of air changes, for example. It's quite new, I would say. At least in the UK, as part of a narrative, indoor environmental quality that's part of a narrative for equality, diversity, and inclusion.
Kelly Barraza:
What are the specific groups that are considered vulnerable when it comes to creating a building that is inclusive, and accessibility, and healthy?
Amr Suliman:
That's quite a big umbrella, really, because that's what the research needs to put into light.
For example, we've had a very interesting session recently where it became clear that the way COVID impacted people was different from one person to the other. For example, those who are being affected by long COVID, for them having a good indoor air quality is essential, really. They can't really go to a place where it's not well-ventilated, it has fresh air, because it has direct impact on their health, and so forth. That was quite interesting.
At the moment, I wouldn't say research has highlighted this, because every time we learn about different social groups who are impacted. Again, just echoing Marina's point of the importance of social research in-hand with the technical research, to tell us where those technical interventions will impact the most.
Kelly Barraza:
How is the rollout of heat pumps in the UK going?
Marina Topouzi:
Well, we have a massive rollout of heat pumps in the UK. One of the issues, going back to previous issues of overheating, cooling and heating that we were discussing, is that our rollout is looking only heating. That goes to resilience that we were saying earlier. That we haven't future-proofed, or seeing a bit in advance, what it might come, how extreme temperatures might require also cooling. The prevention so far is the heat pumps rollout being only for heating and not for cooling.
That is part of what we need to address. We need to see what is coming. I know that it's very short, the period of cooling demand that we have currently in the UK. But it's something that it needs to be addressed, or at least have all the installation in place that it can be addressed in 10 or 20 years. And not have twice the investment of a technology that we need to take in different buildings. That's one thing.
Kelly Barraza:
Any final comments or thoughts for this episode?
Marina Topouzi:
I think that it's very positive that ASHRAE is responding quickly with standards and strategies post-COVID, because that's what we need. We need different agencies, from research and other institutions, to come together and start addressing these issues, and start talking more about what is the demand of changing the way we are designing, building, and using our buildings. That's a very positive thing, and I'm very glad that there are these initiatives.
Amr Suliman:
Yeah. Just to echo Marina, the society has been doing a good job. Again, as you mentioned, the COVID standard that has a huge reach shows the commitment towards addressing the imminent challenges.
I guess the other thing I would say is to not just rely or focus fully on the technical aspect, and work hand-in-hand with the social aspect as well. Again, my personal experience, I came from fillet engineering when I joined Marina. That's when I started to delve more into the social aspect. It's essentially critical, and probably the key aspect in terms of creating impact to see who needs it most, foresee the changes in humanity, foreseeing what are the upcoming events that might impact humanities forever, and so forth. That will be my takeaway, to hopefully work hand-in-hand between technical and social experts.
Kelly Barraza:
Excellent. Well, thank you both so much, Amr and Marina, for joining us on this episode, and giving us your time and expertise on occupants, everything related to occupancy in the built environment. I've been Kelly Barraza with ASRAE Journal Podcast. Thank you for listening.
ASHRAE Journal:
The ASHRAE Journal podcast team is editor, Drew Champlin; managing editor, Kelly Barraza; producer and assistant editor, Allison Hambrick; assistant editor, Mary Sims; associate editor, Tani Palefski; and technical editor, Rebecca Matyasovski.
Copyright ASHRAE. The views expressed in this podcast are those of individuals only and not of ASHRAE, its sponsors, or advertisers. Please refer to ashrae.org/podcast for the full disclaimer.