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Multi-unit residential building (MURB) occupants often express dissatisfaction with their suites' acoustic conditions despite existing building acoustic standards and regulations as well as growing research on noise control and building acoustics. Reasons for this include the lack of proper characterization of acoustic comfort in MURBs and lack of comprehensive and stringent regulations. To better understand factors that impact acoustic comfort and explore strategies to improve the acoustic performance of MURBs, investigations of acoustic conditions were carried out. This work presents the results of the investigations which include subjective and objective evaluations of acoustic conditions in two MURBs. Impact sound insulation measurements using both a tapping machine and a rubber ball as well as 24-hour indoor noise monitoring were carried out in unoccupied suites. An online survey was then used to collect subjective assessments of the noise conditions in the buildings and the effects on occupants' comfort post occupancy. Results of the data analysis suggest that occupants are more sensitive to low-frequency impact sounds than mid- and high-frequency impact noise.

Trends of urbanization, densification, and telework all point to increasing exposure to ambient noise for workers. With the lockdown policies implemented in response to COVID-19, a research opportunity to study perceived noise exposure for teleworking arose. This paper presents the results of a survey on noise issues in multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs) and the consequent effects on occupants' well-being and productivity during the lockdown. Responses were collected from 471 MURB occupants across Canada. The results show that, despite the decrease in environmental noise, many are annoyed by outdoor noise, particularly from traffic and construction activities, and indicated that it affects their ability to work. Effects on ability to work from home were more frequently reported for indoor noise sources particularly airborne and impact noises coming from neighboring suites. Our findings, however, show that noise coming from occupants in the same suite (i.e. roommates and family) present the biggest issue. The findings indicate that existing noise conditions in MURBs might not be suitable for a permanent large-scale implementation of teleworking.

Effective building management strategies require a clear understanding of how occupants perceive their indoor environmental conditions. Despite their important findings, previous studies we...

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-bua-10.1177_1351010X21993742 for Case study: A survey of perceived noise in Canadian multi-unit residential buildings to study long-term implications for widespread teleworking by Maedot S. Andargie, Marianne Touchie and William O’Brien in Building Acoustics

Building occupants are continuously exposed to multiple indoor environmental stimuli, including thermal, visual, acoustic, and air quality related factors. Moreover, personal and contextual aspects can be regarded as additional domains influencing occupants' perception and behaviour. The scientific literature in this area typically deals with these multiple stimuli in isolation. In contrast to single-domain research, multi-domain research analyses at least two different domains, for example, visual and thermal. The relatively few literature reviews that have considered multi-domain approaches to indoor-environmental perception and behaviour covered only a few dozen articles each. The present contribution addresses this paucity by reviewing 219 scientific papers on interactions and cross-domain effects that influence occupants’ indoor environmental perception and behaviour. The objective of the present review is to highlight motivational backgrounds, key methodologies, and major findings of multi-domain investigations of human perception and behaviour in indoor environments. The in-depth review of these papers provides not only an overview of the state of the art, but also contributes to the identification of existing knowledge gaps in this area and the corresponding need for future research. In particular, many studies use “convenience” variables and samples, there is often a lack of theoretical foundation to studies, and there is little research linking perception to action.

Occupants are active participants in their built environment, affecting its performance while simultaneously being affected by its design and indoor environmental conditions. With recent advances in computer modeling, simulation tools, and analysis techniques, topics such as human-building interactions and occupant behavior have gained significant interest in the literature given their premise of improving building design processes and operating strategies. In practice, the focus of occupant-centric literature has been mostly geared towards the latter (i.e., operation), leaving the implications on building design practices underexplored. This paper fills the gap by providing a critical review of existing studies applying computer-based modeling and simulation to guide occupant-centric building design. The reviewed papers are organized along four main themes, namely occupant-centric: (i) metrics of building performance, (ii) modeling and simulation approaches, (iii) design methods and applications, and (iv) supporting practices and mechanisms. Important barriers are identified for a more effective application of occupant-centric building design practices, including the limited consideration of metrics beyond energy efficiency (e.g., occupant well-being and space planning), the limited implementation and validation of the proposed methods, and the lack of integration of occupant behavior modeling in existing building performance simulation tools. Future research directions are discussed, covering large-scale international data collection efforts to move from generic assumptions about occupant behavior to specific/localized knowledge, improved metrics of measuring building performance, and improved industry practices, such as building codes, to promote an occupant-in-the-loop approach to the building design process.

Traditionally, less focus has been given to comfort evaluations in residential buildings compared to commercial buildings. Despite having an increased level of control relative to offices, occupants can still experience health and comfort issues in their residences due to poor environmental conditions which can result in adaptations that may increase energy consumption in buildings. Consequently, there have been more studies which evaluate factors that affect occupant comfort and health in residential buildings in recent years. As high-rise multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs) become more ubiquitous in cities globally, researchers have also started to look at factors that affect occupants' comfort in MURBs. In this paper, a critical review of studies which investigated occupant comfort in MURBs in relation to environmental and non-environmental variables that could have a potential impact on comfort is presented. Various approaches used in assessing occupant comfort are compared, the factors which are important determinants of occupant comfort in MURBs are presented, and the gaps in the literature are identified. Findings of this review show that, in addition to indoor environmental conditions, occupants’ characteristics, building-related characteristics and the outdoor environment can significantly affect occupant comfort in MURBs. The identified gaps include a limited assessment of the impact of non-thermal related environmental conditions on comfort and the impact of non-environmental related conditions, as well as a limited number of studies on health and productivity. Based on these findings, the paper includes recommendations on research design and methodologies for future occupant comfort studies in MURBs.

This paper presents an integrated data collection and analysis framework to comprehensively evaluate the impact of office indoor building environment on occupants’ comfort, satisfaction, and work performance. The latter includes the perceived productivity level of respondents as well as an objective measure of basic cognitive thinking skills. The framework consists of five main stages, which include: 1) development of a survey for the subjective evaluation of comfort levels of occupants with various indoor environmental metrics, 2) development of a performance test for an objective evaluation of productivity, 3) assembly and calibration of an indoor environmental monitoring station, 4) data collection using the tools developed in the first three stages, and 5) data analysis using descriptive statistics, Spearman’s rank correlations, and ordinal logistic regression models. The framework is applied and validated through a case study of a green university campus in Abu Dhabi, UAE, where data was collected from 156 building users. Results show that both environmental conditions and occupants’ personal characteristics have significant impacts on how occupants perceive their indoor environment, affecting their overall satisfaction, reported happiness, reported productivity levels, and basic cognitive abilities. In parallel, demographical factors such as gender and age are significant determinants of most of the studied comfort and performance metrics, confirming the need to further account for the personal characteristics of occupants when assessing the performance of the built environment.

Aegis is a “smart” wireless-wristband alarm system that takes as input not a specific alarm time, as in traditional alarm systems, but rather a time interval specified by a user. The system then automatically chooses the optimal alarm time within that range to minimize sleep inertia in the user after waking. Worn as a wristband, Aegis continuously processes their movement readings to map their sleep stages throughout the night, and remembers the individual user's typical sleep pattern from previous nights, combining these two sources of data to predict where in the sleep cycle the user-set time range will fall. Because sleep inertia is caused by an interruption of deep sleep, Aegis chooses its alarm time to coincide with periods of light sleep, and wakes up the user by vibrating the wristband instead of sounding an alarm, to minimize noise disturbance of roommates, spouses, and/or family members. Preliminary performance evaluation demonstrated the ability of Aegis to track sleep patterns and user satisfaction was confirmed via questionnaires and debriefing.

Occupants’ comfort perception affects building energy consumptions. To improve the understanding of human comfort, which is crucial to reduce energy demand, laboratory experiments with humans in controlled environments (test rooms) are fundamental, but their potential also depends on the characteristic of each research facility. Nowadays, there is no common understanding for definitions, concepts, and procedures related to human comfort studies performed in test rooms. Identifying common features would allow standardising test procedures, reproducing the same experiments in different contexts, and sharing knowledge and test possibilities. This review identifies 187 existing test rooms worldwide: 396 papers were systematically selected, thoroughly reviewed, and analysed in terms of performed experiments and related test room details. The review highlights a rising interest in the topic during the last years, since 46% of related papers has been published between 2016 and 2020. A growing interest in non-thermal sensory domains (such as visual and air quality) and multi-domain studies about occupant's whole comfort emerged from the results. These research trends have entailed a change in the way test rooms are designed, equipped and controlled, progressively becoming more realistic inhabitable environments. Nevertheless, some lacks in comfort investigation are highlighted: some continents (like Africa and South America) and climate zones are found to be underrepresented, while involved subjects are mainly students performing office tasks. This review aspires to guide scientists and professionals toward the improved design or the audit of test room experimental facilities, especially in countries and climate zones where human comfort indoors is under-studied.