Occupant-centered research on the energy sufficiency of buildings by considering indoor comfort and well-being of people

The research scope of the Laboratory of Integrated Comfort Engineering (ICE) is to address the challenging goal of society to transition towards sustainable cities and districts by de-carbonizing the footprint of buildings. The main approach of ICE is to efficiently exploit resources such as energy and water for heating and cooling services in buildings by accurately matching demand and supply, performing thermodynamic analysis, and implementing the integrated design of energy systems.

ICE accounts for human-building interactions at the core of its research approach for the data-driven design of building services. To accomplish its research mission, ICE performs:

1) Laboratory experiments with occupants to better understand their needs and thermal preferences

2) Field studies for simultaneous analysis of subjective indoor experience of occupants and thermal performance of the building

3) Modelling and simulations of energy performance of separate building services along with the global behaviour of the building coupled with indoor environment.

Energy efficiency in the built environment can be achieved by understanding the demand

Dolaana Khovalyg, Head of the ICE Lab