International Perspectives on Comfortable, Healthy, and Safe Indoor Environments

Paula Olsiewski, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and Andrew Persily, U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have dedicated their work to exploring factors determining the quality of the indoor environment. In a special guest lecture they will elucidate the path from policy making and design guidance to well-functioning buildings in operation, with a special focus on ventilation aspects.

The visit and seminar will be hosted by Despoina Teli and Lars Ekberg, Building Services Engineering, Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Chalmers.

Program:

• Introduction and welcome
  
• Using Model Law to Promote Indoor Air Quality
  Dr.Paula Olsiewski, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, USA
  The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has created the MODEL CLEAN INDOOR AIR ACT to be widely used as a template to monitor, regulate, and improve IAQ so people can breathe healthy air. Just as drinking water is made safe through filtration and sanitation measures, indoor air within public buildings can be made safe through filtration, ventilation, and other measures. The MODEL CLEAN INDOOR AIR ACT provides a comprehensive framework for states to create legislation to improve indoor air and protect health. Public health researchers, officials, legislators, and policymakers need to realize how improvements in IAQ are a cost-effective means to save lives and improve the public’s health. 
  
  
• Questions from the audience
  
  
• Ventilation Requirements in Educational Buildings – How to Know they are Actually Happening
  Andrew Persily, U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA
  Providing sufficient quantities of clean ventilation air to school buildings is essential to the health, comfort and learning outcomes of students. School ventilation has become an even more pressing issue in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and in light of other airborne infectious diseases that already exist or may become more prevalent in the future. Ventilation requirements have been part of standards and guidance for many decades, but the rationales supporting these rates has not always been well understood. This presentation will review how ventilation requirements for schools have been developed in the past and how they might evolve in the future. It will also address how to evaluate ventilation performance in school buildings and some of the challenges involved.
  
  
• Questions from the audience
  
  
• Discussion
  
  
• End of seminar – Coffee and Tea