Recently, Earth’s climate has lucidly deteriorated, various aspects in our lives are affected by the so-called “climate change”. Climate change and global warming represent a growing hazard to the wellbeing and comfort of humans and other creatures on the blue planet. In the built environment, sustainable adjustments through engineering measures can reduce the vulnerability of the built environment in its exposure to climate changes.

This project is part of a joint collaboration of a research group including five chairs in the faculty of civil engineering. In this project, the chair of building physics conducts the study jointly with the chair of computing in civil engineering, the study of the effect of climate change on thermal comfort is powered by the use of IoT technologies. Here the project focuses on thermal comfort as a base of research to achieve energy efficiency in the built environment, a sector that is responsible for increasing energy consumption through space conditioning, which consequently exacerbates global warming. Systematic and conceptual studies on the effects of climate change on indoor climate and energy efficiency in buildings are so far not available.

Furthermore, a series of experiments are to be conducted in a controlled environment using wireless sensor nodes to investigate methods to increase personal thermal comfort of users, and accordingly aim to create a digitally-developed, adaptable model to reduce the future effects of climate change on personal thermal comfort. Climate change is expected to lead to increasing overheating periods, which leads to higher air temperatures in buildings that affects the thermal comfort of users.

A prototype smart monitoring station is developed and built using low-cost sensors that are calibrated to high-accuracy sensors. The monitoring station measures primary factors of thermal comfort, to enhance the accuracy of the calculation of thermal comfort. In addition, an associated machine learning (ML) thermal comfort model is expected to present more accurate results of personal thermal comfort. The results of the thermal comfort evaluation will help enhancing thermal comfort of users under changing conditions caused by the climate change. Furthermore, users are expected to use more energy-efficient space conditioning tools, such as personalised comfort systems (PCS) coupled with the smart monitoring station and present an effective tool to improve thermal comfort in the built environment.

Funding body:

Supported by the Free State of Thuringia from the European Social Fund (ESF)

Runtime:

01/2020 - 06/2022

*Research group

Title: Climate change impacts on buildings and neighbourhoods - Structural integrity, indoor environment and energy efficiency:

Institute for Structural Engineering

•      Complex structures (Jun.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Lars Abrahamczyk, coordinator)
•      Modelling and Simulation - Design (Prof. Dr. Guido Morgenthal)
•      Steel and hybrid construction (Prof. Dr.-Ing. Matthias Kraus)

Institute for Building Informatics, Mathematics and Building Physics

•      Computer Science in Civil Engineering (Prof. Dr.-Ing. Kay Smarsly)
•      Building physics (Prof. Dr.-Ing. Conrad Völker)

contact person: 

Ammar Osman, M.Sc.