Collaborative Research: Broadening Equitable, Affordable, and Health-Promoting Access to Energy Efficient Housing

由于建筑环境不平等而产生的健康差距，如暴露在热风险中的不均衡，由于在支付能源费用方面面临的挑战而加剧。近三分之一(31%)的美国家庭为支付能源账单和维持舒适的家中温度而苦苦挣扎。室内环境在塑造身心健康方面发挥着至关重要的作用，特别是在少数族裔和低收入社区。该项目的目标是通过基于模拟的发现、数据分析和社区参与，制定负担得起的高效能源利用策略，并在STEM学生中培养具有社会公平性的工程思维。通过调查现实世界能源使用对人类健康和福祉的影响，该项目解决了与低收入家庭的能源使用和贫困相关的社会和经济挑战。尽管美国存在低收入家庭能源援助计划(LIHEAP)等能源援助计划，但对于控制室内温度对能源账单和健康的影响，人们仍然缺乏了解。这种知识差距阻碍了提供具有成本效益和热舒适的室内环境，这些环境有可能解决居住条件方面的差异。本项目旨在通过建立一个全面的知识库来填补这一空白，该知识库利用参数化建筑能源建模和模拟方法，结合经验数据分析，在不同的住宅建筑条件下平衡能源需求减少和热舒适阈值。此外，还采用了基于社区的参与式外展来收集低收入住宅的实际测量数据，以确保模拟结果的有效性。然后，通过少数群体服务机构(MSI)和非MSI机构之间的可持续伙伴关系，将研究成果传播给STEM中代表性不足的群体，以促进将工程发现置于社会科学背景下的能力。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Health disparities arising from inequities in the built environment, such as uneven exposure to heat risk, are exacerbated by the challenges faced in affording energy expenses. Nearly one-third (31%) of U.S. households struggle with paying energy bills and maintaining comfortable temperatures in their homes. The indoor environment plays a crucial role in shaping both physical and mental health outcomes, particularly in minority and low-income communities. The goal of this project is to develop affordable and efficient energy use strategies through simulation-based discovery, data analysis, and community engagement, and to cultivate an engineering mindset with social equity among STEM students. By investigating the impact of real-world energy usage on human health and well-being, this project addresses the societal and economic challenges associated with energy use and poverty in low-income households. Ultimately, it strives to shift from current static building control practices towards a sustainable and adaptable approach to the built environment.Despite the existence of energy assistance programs such as the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) in the U.S., there remains a persistent lack of understanding regarding the impact of controlling indoor temperatures on energy bills and health. This knowledge gap hinders the provision of cost-effective and thermally comfortable indoor environments, which have the potential to address disparities in dwelling conditions. This project aims at filling this gap by establishing a comprehensive knowledge base for balancing energy demand reduction with thermal comfort thresholds across diverse residential building conditions by utilizing parametric building energy modeling and simulation methods in combination with empirical data analytics. Additionally, community-based participatory outreach is employed to collect actual measured data from low-income residential housing, ensuring the validation of the simulation results. The research outcomes are then disseminated to underrepresented groups in STEM through a sustainable partnership between Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) and non-MSI institutions to promote the ability to situate engineering discovery within social science contexts.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.