Smart Living Lunch

Join our next Smart Living Lunch online on 11 May 2021 from 11:00 to 12:00. Evangelos Belias (HOBEL, EPFL) will present the influence of ambient air pollution on natural ventilation potential in Europe. Zoom link on demand.

Natural ventilation (NV) is a technique, which can improve the buildings' energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality when it is adequately designed and operated. Nevertheless, the urban environments contain a plethora of factors limiting the applicability of NV, such as the surrounding buildings, noise, and ambient air pollution. In parallel with the climate, these parameters define the NV potential (NVP) of an area.  The existing NVP calculation methods are either complex and difficult to be used, either they neglect the influence of some parameters, like the ambient air pollution.

Research conducted within HOBEL proposes a new methodology for quantifying the NVP by considering the climate and ambient air pollution. This method was used to estimate the NVP of urban and suburban sites of 27 European cities. The results revealed that the level of urbanization and proximity to traffic reduces the local NVP on average: 11% for suburban background sites, 28% for suburban traffic sites, 22% for urban background sites, and 50% for urban traffic sites. This method can aid designers in estimating a building's NVP and implement NV without increasing occupants' exposure to outdoor air pollution.

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 754354, and from EPFL.