Building Performance Evaluations for New and Existing Long-Term Care Homes

建筑物不仅对环境有重大影响，而且对居住者的健康和福祉也有重大影响。新型冠状病毒大流行对长期护理的老年居民造成的不成比例的影响揭示了这些设施存在严重的潜在问题，迫切需要重新考虑长期护理院的设计，建造和运营。尽管环保意识的建筑实践不断增长，但在考虑能源使用的预测和实际价值时，预期和实际建筑性能之间仍然存在差距，温室气体排放、水消耗和影响居住者健康、生产力和福祉的室内环境质量。为更好地了解这些性能差距，并确定在建筑设计、施工和改造/翻新方面的潜在改进，可利用评估建筑性能的工具。长期护理院有具体的工具包，但主要集中在基本属性，如氛围和内部布局，辅助措施，方向和寻路，而不是建筑设计，该项目由红河学院的建筑效率技术访问中心领导，将开发并试验更好的工具，以促进长期绩效评估的知识和应用。定期护理院，以提高其居民和工作人员的健康和福祉。这些工具的应用将使政府、私人和公共长期护理组织以及建筑行业能够就如何改善建筑运营和维护做法做出更好的循证决策，并有针对性地投资于新的长期护理院的建筑功能和现有长期护理院的改造/翻新战略。

Buildings have a major effect not only on the environment, but also on the health and wellness of the people who occupy them. The COVID-19 pandemic's disproportionate impact on elderly residents in long-term care has revealed serious underlying problems in these facilities and an urgent need to rethink the design, construction and operation of long-term care homes.Although environmentally conscious building practices continue to grow, there is still a gap between anticipated and actual building performance when considering the predicted and actual values for energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption and indoor environmental quality that impacts occupant health, productivity and well-being. There is also a lack of data regarding the performance of buildings in the long-term care sector.To better understand these performance gaps, and to identify potential improvements in building design, construction and retrofit/renovation, tools to evaluate building performance may be utilized. Specific toolkits exist for long-term care homes but concentrate primarily on basic attributes such as ambience and interior layout, assistive measures, orientation and wayfinding rather than building design, construction and operation factors that impact human health.This project led by Red River College's Building Efficiency Technology Access Centre will develop and then pilot better tools to advance the knowledge and application of performance evaluations in long-term care homes to enhance the health and wellness of their residents and staff. Application of these tools will enable governments, private and public long-term care organizations as well as the building industry make better, evidence-based decisions about how to improve building operation and maintenance practices and target investments in construction features for new long-term care homes and retrofit/renovation strategies of existing ones.