INVESTIGATING THE INTEGRATION OF WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY AND VENTILATION OPERATING SYSTEMS FOR THERMAL COMFORT

Abstract

A shift in focus for traditional building control systems to be more occupant centric has led to an increase in building control systems research. Ventilation systems are a vital building system that purpose is to provide its occupants a thermally comfortable indoor environment. Since thermal comfort is a subjective term and varies between individuals, ventilation systems should not only be using environmental data to adjust the parameters to the set-points provided by in the industry, but also cater to thermal subjectivity. In the tropical country of Singapore, industry standard Singapore Standard SS 554: 2016 states that the acceptable limits for air temperature is 23°C to 25°C, and the relative humidity is <65% for buildings that were designed to SS 553 and SS 554, and <70% for other buildings.

However, with thermal comfort perceived subjectively, the recommended set-points might not be as recommended. Using non-intrusive data collection methods, we employed wearable technology in the collection of real-time physiological data such as skin temperature and skin relative humidity, heart rate etc. Point-in-time surveys were also conducted as physiological data was collected to determine the thermal state and subjectivity that the participants had perceived themselves to be in.

It was found that the recommended set-point air temperature(°C) and relative humidity (%) values could be set higher based on the acceptable range of thermal comfort states the participants had perceived upon being subjected to varying environmental conditions. This study concludes with a suggestion to incorporate wearable technology with ventilation systems to optimize overall thermal comfort.