A BEHAVIOURAL APPROACH TO THERMAL COMFORT ASSESSMENT

Abstract

The paper1 describes the use of field study data to identify and quantify the individual contribution's of adaptive actions by subjects in order to achieve thermal comfort. These actions include operating building controls, responding to spatial variation of room conditions, modifying posture and clothing, and metabolic rate. In order for these actions to occur, the adaptive opportunity must exist, which to some extent is a property of the building. Suggestions for the integration of adaptive effects into comfort-predicting models are made including a way of avoiding temperature as an input, which is shown to have poor correlation with reported thermal satisfaction.