USE OF IOT SENSORS TO EVALUATE TEMPERATURE, RELATIVE HUMIDITY, VOC AND CO2 VALUES IN AN OFFICE BUILDING

Abstract

There is increasing concern and awareness about the importance of indoor environmental quality on occupants’ health. With rapidly advancing technology, it is now possible to carry out highly accurate measurements to determine the indoor environmental quality of a building, such as portable Internet of Things sensors. The sensors are able to measure various environmental parameters such as temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide, volatile organic compounds, light and noise, and the large amounts of data collected can be stored in online databases. There have indeed been many studies and researches carried out regarding indoor environmental quality. However, there are few that have studied the trends, possible relationships and correlations in great detail. Hence, this dissertation aims to bridge this gap by setting various objectives. The paper will establish the current indoor environmental conditions in an NUS office by deploying smart Internet of Things sensors and identify trends in environmental conditions during daily working and non-working hours, and weekdays and weekends. It will investigate the relationship between various indoor environmental parameters mentioned above and relationships between office occupants’ activities and various environmental parameters as well. Finally, it will analyse changes in indoor environmental quality over a few months In order to achieve the objectives set out above, extensive literature review was carried out. Following that, Internet of Things sensors were installed to collect the office building’s data. The data collected over the 3 months of study was analysed. It was found that the indoor environmental quality of the office was relatively good. However, there are still rooms for improvement to achieve potential cost and energy savings. Therefore, recommendations are on improvements are suggested in this dissertation as well. Some limitations of this dissertation were identified, such as the lack of time to conduct a more extensive research. Potential areas for future research in this topic were suggested as well.