The physiological and cognitive effects of environmental stimuli from the built environment on humans have been studied for more than a century, over short time frames in terms of comfort, and over long-time frames in terms of health and wellbeing. The strong interdependence of objective and subjective factors in these fields of study has traditionally involved the necessity to rely on a number of qualitative sources of information, as self-report variables, which however, raise criticisms concerning their reliability and precision. Recent advancements in sensing technology and data processing methodologies have strongly contributed towards a renewed interest in biometric data as a potential high-precision tool to study the physiological effects of selected stimuli on humans using more objective and real-time measures. Within this context, this review reports on a broader spectrum of available and advanced biosensing techniques used in the fields of building engineering, human physiology, neurology, and psychology. The interaction and interdependence between (i) indoor environmental parameters and (ii) biosignals identifying human physiological response to the environmental stressors are systematically explored. Online databases ScienceDirect, Scopus, MDPI and ResearchGate were scanned to gather all relevant publications in the last 20 years, identifying and listing tools and methods of biometric data collection, assessing the potentials and drawbacks of the most relevant techniques. The review aims to support the introduction of biomedical signals as a tool for understanding the physiological aspects of indoor comfort in the view of achieving an improved balance between human resilience and building resilience, addressing human indoor health as well as energetic and environmental building performance.

This paper presents the findings of a 6-week long, five-participant experiment in a controlled climate chamber. The experiment was designed to understand the effect of time on thermal behaviour, electrodermal activity (EDA) and the adaptive behavior of occupants in response to a thermal non-uniform indoor environment were continuously logged. The results of the 150 h-long longitudinal study suggested a significant difference in tonic EDA levels between “morning” and “afternoon” clusters although the environmental parameters were the same, suggesting a change in the human body’s thermal reception over time. The correlation of the EDA and temperature was greater for the afternoon cluster (r = 0.449, p < 0.001) in relation to the morning cluster (r = 0.332, p < 0.001). These findings showed a strong temporal dependency of the skin conductance level of the EDA to the operative temperature, following the person’s circadian rhythm. Even further, based on the person’s chronotype, the beginning of the “afternoon” cluster was observed to have shifted according to the person’s circadian rhythm. Furthermore, the study is able to show how the body reacts differently under the same PMV values, both within and between subjects; pointing to the lack of temporal parameter in the PMV model.

Due to climate change, emission balancing is a relevant tool to quantify the environmental impact of a building system. The electrification of energy production at a national level, as well as energy supply at a building level, shifts the focus to the emission factor (EF) of the electricity grid. Currently, static EFs are used for calculating the emission balance. However, the electricity grid already shows fluctuations in power generation and EF due to renewable energies. The paper reviews recent literature outlining the research gap and presents the development of a simulation setup and concept, in which the emission balance of the building operation changes, using dynamic EFs that map fluctuations at an hourly resolution. In the first step, we simulate the thermal building and radiance performance. The data are than used in a second step to conduct a system simulation, which analyzes the effects of the dynamic EFs. The results show that the dynamic balance approach for different building system variants deviates considerably from the static approach. By comparing different concepts for the loading strategy, the predictive strategy outperforms a common control strategy, when considering the energy prices and/or the emissions. This is especially true for systems with inert storage units, where charging times significantly influence the balance, as well as for systems with PV integration. This paper outlines the potential of the EFs-optimized control increases when evaluating a potential scenario for the year 2040, factoring in increased seasonal and daily fluctuations in electricity generation.

The sun’s total radiation alone exceeds the world population’s entire energy consumption by 7.500 times and ignites secondary renewable energy sources. The end energy consumption buildings use for heating amounts to 28% of Germany’s total energy consumption. With the ongoing trend of digitalization and the transition of the German energy supply away from fossil fuels and the consequent political dependency, electric heat pumps and photovoltaic (PV) systems have become increasingly important to the discussion. This has led to an increasing demand for smart control strategies, especially for inert systems such as thermally activated building systems (TABS). This paper presents and analyses a weather predictive control (WPC) strategy using a validated thermodynamic simulation model. The literature review of this paper outlines that the current common control strategies are data intense and complex in their implementation into the built environment. The simple approach of the WPC uses future ambient temperature and solar radiation to optimize the control of the heating, cooling, ventilation, and sun protection system. The thermal comfort and energy demand evaluate the concept. We show that with a WPC for TABS, thermal comfort can improve without increasing the energy demand for the office building in the moderate climate of Munich. Furthermore, this paper concludes that the WPC works more effectively with more thermal mass. This simplified building control strategy promotes the European roadmap goal of climate neutrality in 2050, as it bridges the phenomenon of the performance gap.

Amid the climate change and the worldwide catastrophes, witnessed on a daily, we find ourselves in a time in which we need to start justifying any recourse and energy consumption, at least of which is not truly renewable. While the outside temperatures become more extreme, the inside environment becomes more relevant. The way we design and operate our buildings is directly influenced by current building standards and as we spend almost all our time indoors, our comfort, wellbeing and health are crucially affected by such. The last five decades have seen many approaches in establishing guidelines for a comfortable indoor environment. But while current standards favor the narrow temperature ranges of static homogeneous environments, they have been criticized for their high energy consumption and long-term health implications. The paper compares a typical office space with mechanical cooling with that of a passive strategy, by evaluating the energy consumption and health over comfort. The results show a 64% cooling potential within the mechanically cooled scenario as well as the passive strategy complying to standard without any cooling energy.