FW-HTF-P: WORK WELL: Understanding the interrelationships between humans and technology to improve the quality of work life in smart buildings

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Humans construct buildings primarily to protect themselves from environmental forces. Many people spend 1/3 of the day for 5 days a week at work in buildings and these buildings have become increasingly more sophisticated and technologically advanced in providing optimized and controlled indoor environments. While these “Smart Buildings” may be energy efficient, little is known about the impact such buildings have on the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health of the individuals who work in highly automated and technically-controlled environments. This project assembles a multidisciplinary team of researchers that converges disparate research in a single, comprehensive strategy to correlate building performance measured across multiple variables, such as energy efficiency, maintenance, noise levels, lighting types and levels, air quality, temperature, humidity and air movement against the health, well-being, and workplace satisfaction of the individuals in those buildings. The outcome of the project will be new, comprehensive lines of inquiry that holistically explore the interactions between these various aspects in order to improve the design and functionality of buildings in service to the health and wellbeing of the people who occupy them.The research will focus on workplaces in high-performing buildings that have “tight” building enclosures and highly automated heating, air conditioning, and lighting systems. The quantifiable performance of these offices and of the buildings as a whole, will be obtained from the energy metering of the buildings to determine the Energy Use Intensity (EUI) for comparison across structures. Detailed analysis of the building envelopes will yield a common method to compare the efficiency of building construction for each office under study. To obtain more detailed and specific local data, sensors will be placed within offices and various locations in each of the subject buildings to systematically capture noise, air quality, temperature, humidity, light, air velocity and airborne compounds. Environmental data will be captured by accessing regional weather records and sensors installed outside each of the buildings. Directly measurable physical health data from individual occupants of the buildings will be obtained through wearable biosensors, while qualitative information about workplace satisfaction will be obtained through a series of post-occupancy-evaluations. The systematic collection and analysis of data across multiple factors will reveal unforeseen interactions or unintended consequences between building performance and occupant well-being and will lead to new findings and proposed interventions to improve both the performance of buildings and the satisfaction of the people working in these high-performing environments.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.