Assistant Professor Michael Waring, PhD (PI) and Associate Professor Jin Wen, PhD (co-PI) are recent recipients of a National Science Foundation (NSF) award titled "Intelligent Multi-Criteria Building Ventilation Control within Dynamic Urban Environments," in the amount of $299,666 over three years. Poor indoor air quality (IAQ) substantially impacts human health and productivity especially given that people spend the majority of their time indoors. Maintaining acceptable indoor air quality (IAQ) requires ventilation, so commercial buildings set their ventilation rates according to minimum standards to attempt to ensure good IAQ. However, higher rates may be beneficial since more ventilation air increases occupant productivity and decreases absenteeism, though increasing ventilation does require more energy to move and condition the air, can strain the electricity grid, and can potentially degrade IAQ in highly polluted urban areas.
The goal of this project is to develop a new framework that moves beyond the current minimum ventilation rate paradigm and instead treats ventilation as a multiobjective problem to be optimized that considers all of these competing impacts holistically. This work will identify the next-generation of intelligent ventilation strategies for high performance green buildings. Two Ph.D. students will work on this project, Adams Rackes (NSF GRF recipient, who helped conceive aspects of the project) and Tom Ben-David.