The concept of the evacuation safety design of an atrium building with permanent smoke insulation on refuge compartment is proposed. Namely, in case of a fire, by keeping the refuge compartment secured from smoke steadily, people in the building can stay the compartment for long time and they have no pressing need of staircase evacuation. Major results are as follows
1. Evacuation planning with refuge compartment secured from smoke steadily is effective especially for buildings in which many people unfamiliar with the buildings (ex. commerce facilities) and elderly and could not evacuate by oneself (ex. elderly facilities and hospitals).
2. Steady smoke insulation of refuge compartment is achieved by keeping the neutral pressure plane of smoke in an atrium higher than occupant area. While many people passing thought the doors of staircase and those doors are kept opened, the refuge compartments of many floors are combined as one shaft. On the other hand, people stays the same floor and those doors kept closed, those refuge compartments assume to be independent each floor. So the condition of smoke insulation should be satisfied for both cases.
3. Compatibility of above both conditions and applicability for relatively large heat release rate fire are confirmed, this means the passive smoke insulation has high redundancy. So this passive smoke control method is suitable for long time smoke insulation of refuge compartment.

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In view of the rapid large scale development of underground in the central big cities, especially around terminal stations, evacuation experiments have been conducted with 79 subjects using an underground shopping mall near Tokyo Station actually in service after business hours. Four groups of 20 subjects started from different locations and time to “escape” from any of emergency exits was measured for each subject. 12 out of the 79 subjects wore elderly simulator to compare evacuation behavior of elderly and that of younger people. The evacuation behavior was also monitored by video cameras and escape route of each subject was reproduced afterwards. Five experiments were conducted using the lighting conditions and layout of emergency exits as parameters. The starting point was changed from experiment to experiment, not making any subject repeat similar selection of escape route. The shopping mall is composed of grid of passages, and is installed with escape route sign lights on every passage according to Fire Service Law. In every experiment, it was observed that considerable portion of subjects did not select right passage toward nearest exit at intersection nor passed over right exits. These are not compliant with widely accepted assumption for deterministic modeling of evacuation in mall-like facility. Factors dictating the probability to select right passage at intersections and that to recognize emergency exit are analyzed from the experimental data.

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We conducted a questionnaire survey to clarify the regional difference of residents' heating methods and their opinions about heating. The people who answered our questionnaire were residents of detached houses prefabricated by a major housing company. The results or our analysis are as follows.
Warmer the region, narrower is the heating space and shorter is the heating time. Such differences in the heating practices are also reflected in the behavior of residents, resulting in regional disparities in methods used for controlling the room temperature and efforts for energy conservation. Since it is a common practice in cold regions to adequately heat the room using a heater, measures used for protection against cold, other than heating and seasonal changes in the lifestyle, are fewer when compared to warm regions. Regional differences in the satisfaction levels of residents about the indoor conditions in winter were small. Satisfaction levels were high across all the regions.

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In this research, people's sitting and lying postures on a grass surface in a park were observed. The principle results are summarized as follows.
1. More people tended to lie down on sloping grass than on level grass, but the degree of slope did not necessarily affect their postures.
2. Men tended to lie down more than women, and the majority of the women sat vertically on the grass.
3. Younger people tended to lie down more than older people.
4. Men tended to lie down when they were alone or when they were accompanied by either male or female friends. Women tended to lie down when they were accompanied by male friends.
5. When more people were on the grass, those lying down tended to remain face up.
6. When the temperature was low, people tended to sit, and moreover, sitting people tended to lean forward.

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In the way finding system, visual and auditory information should be easily understood, and one information should not disturb the other. However, visitors often get lost and go to different places. In the present research, the effects of speech information (or character information) on short-term memory when subjects memorize scrolling-text (or speech information) are investigated. In the experiments, the memory span of memorized speech or text in various conditions is measured. It is suggested that combined effects in visual and auditory information processing occur in case that characters information is memorized while speech information that has the same content as characters is simultaneously presented, and mental set is formed to both visual and auditory information. The combined effects can lead to correct memorizing of information.

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When we construct a building near the railway tracks, it is often necessary to predict the level of vibration and structure-borne sound induced in the building. Therefore, we investigated the property of vibration propagation from the ground to the pile-foundations based on vibration tests with a soil-pile interaction model including a footing-beam, and predicted the property of vibration propagation with a simple prediction method based on the dynamic-substructure method. Furthermore, we predicted the vibration propagation from the ground to the pile-foundations of two buildings, of which the one was located near the tracks on the ground and the other near the viaduct, and confirmed that the predicted results were similar to the measurements. Finally, we discussed the effect of a vibration insulation method for footing-beams based on the prediction method.

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The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of vivid colored lighting on appetite for food. The experiments were carried out to observe subjects' evaluations of various dishes illuminated with vivid colored lights in a room assumed to be a restaurant. The results of the experiments are summarized as follows.
1. Appetite tended not to decrease when the food was illuminated with colors similar to those of the food. It was thought that this was because the food color did not change to any great extent.
2. Appetite for food with plural colors tended to decrease more than was the case for monochrome foods. It was thought that this was because the color balance of the food with plural colors was easily changed by the colored lights.
3. Appetite tended to be maintained at a constant level when the temperature of the food corresponded to the warm/cool image of the colored lights. On the other hand, appetite tended to decrease when the above two factors did not correspond.
4. When the food was illuminated with blue and green lights, the appetite of women tended to be lower than that of men.

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The purpose of this study is to identify discomfort glare from large light sources with non-uniform luminance distribution. The effects of the contrast between luminance of the sky and that of the ground within an artificial window on the evaluation of discomfort glare were experimented on. No significant difference in discomfort glare from the artificial window of the same average luminance with different levels of the skyline was found. The results showed that glare from the source whose luminance contrast ranging from 1/2 to 1/20 can be estimated by average luminance of the source.

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Translucent thermal insulation walls for detached houses are to take solar radiation gain and daylight indoor for heating and daytime lighting energy reduction and for comfortable lighting environment. In this paper, study on the wall performance by means of computer simulation is described. The computer simulation shows that, a higher light transmittance brings a large reduction of daytime lighting energy. In order to reduce heating energy, the total solar energy transmittance is most important factor. The higher the total solar energy transmittance, the more the heating energy is reduced. The optical and thermal performance of a wall which brings the largest total energy reduction (heating, cooling, daytime lighting) depends on climate. The wall with 0.4[W/K•m²] of U value (overall heat transfer coefficient), 0.32 of the solar transmittance, and 0.38 of the luminous transmittance can reduce a total energy brings a large energy reduction in total, in Tokyo or most region in Japan.

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In the measurement of the solar irradiance and the daylight illuminance, the calibration of the sensors is important. And the relation between the measurement data and the actual phenomenon should be examined closely enough. In this paper, the calibration for securing the measurement accuracy of the sensors is especially described as difficulties in the measurement of solar irradiance and daylight illuminance. In addition, the problems, the problems that occur from the difference of the time constant of sensors when the irradiance and the illiminance are measured at the same time are described.

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We proposed how to predict the thermal environment easily and quantitatively according to the change in the heat load by CRI. The indexes called CRI (Contribution Ratio of Indoor climate) were developed so that how each heat source or sink in a room contributes to form the local air temperature can be easily looked into. And, we developed energy simulation considering spatial distribution, by coupling the thermal predict equation with CRI and Energy simulation, such as thermal network calculating program. In this paper, we show case study of this mathematical evaluation method in comparison with two HVAC systems in a classroom, radiation floor cooling with underfloor air-conditioning system, and conventional one, and confirm the effectiveness of this new approach.

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Heat and insulation capacities were evaluated by a regression analysis between the indoor-outdoor difference of temperature and the coefficient of variation of indoor temperature coupled with the way of living. Airtightness and ventilation were evaluated by a regression analysis between the indoor-outdoor difference of temperature and that of absolute humidity. The thermal performance in 5 houses with patients of atopic dermatitis was compared using the procedures described above. Absolute and relative humilities were extremely low in one patient house that had highfrequency ventilation.

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This paper investigates young children's thermoregulatory capabilities through a comparison of young children's thermal responses and heat balances with their mother's. The following results were obtained: 1) The majority of children's local skin temperatures were significantly higher than that of the mother's during the 24°C and 32°C conditions. 2) In the 32°C and 28°C condition there was no significant difference between the child and mother's thermo-physiological responses. However there was a difference in blood flow to the skin through contraction of blood vessels in the cold conditions of 24°C and 20°C, which suggested an undeveloped thermo-physiological response in the children. 3) It was found when investigating the heat diffusion of children and mothers that there were significant differences in the 24°C and 32°C conditions in regards to metabolic rate, convection, radiation and evaporation.

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The urban surface has been covered with concrete buildings and asphalt pavements. They have large thermal capacity and absorb solar heat so that heat island phenomena may appear in the urban area. Therefore increase of solar reflection at the urban surfaces is one of countermeasures of heat island, because high reflective roof (hereafter cool roof) and high reflective pavement (hereafter cool pavement) can cool the urban surface and reduce the heat flux from them to urban air. The measured data in the previous paper shows that cool pavement can reduce sensible heat flux from pavement to urban air. On the other hand, reflected solar radiation from pavement may raise surface temperature of human body and cause discomfort of pedestrians. This paper shows that measured temperature of human body models and calculated SET^* on cool pavement are higher than those on ordinary pavement according to the amount of reflective heat. In this paper CFD simulations are conducted to study human body temperature when only pavement for vehicles is coated by the high reflective paint and sidewalk for pedestrians is not high reflective.

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In this paper, a linear programming model has been developed. The objective is to minimize annual cost of the energy system for a given customer equipped with a biomass combined heat and power (CHP) plant, combining with a back-up boiler. The model reports the optimal biomass system capacities that customers could employ given their electricity and thermal requirements. Using this model, an investigation is conducted of economically optimal biomass investment for a residential district in Kitakyushu Science and Research Park. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis has been elaborated in order to show how the optimal solutions as well as the economics of the biomass energy system would vary due to changes of some key parameters including biogas price and carbon tax rate.

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The overarching objective of this study is to develop the numerical model based on reaction- diffusion model that predict colony forming by taking into account the influence of nutriments, moisture, temperature and surface characteristics of building materials for various fungi. Toward this end, this paper provides two results. The first topic is the results of fundamental experiment which measure the growth responses of colony size on culture media under various environmental conditions. The second topic is concerning the mathematical models that reproduce the colony formation on the PDA medium and numerical simulation intended for the experimental conditions. As results by the execution of the sensitivity analysis, we did the fitting of the model coefficient by using the experiment data. The mathematical models proposes by this research received a strong influence to the nourishment concentration on the surface of construction materials, and were in reasonable agreement with the experimental data.

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This study aims at discussing the methods which could measure effectively the ionic compounds using Si surface on the condition of electric field. Due to the difficulty of measuring the ionic and non-ionic compounds separately, the chemical and physical characteristics are still unknown. As the first step of the study, the authors carried out experiments to analyze the airborne compounds under an electric field with various field strengths. For the experimental apparatus, the clean chamber was set up with the corona discharge type ionizer, discharger of chemical component, witness plate for testing and tool for setting electric field. The exposure experiment was performed to select the test compounds and the adsorbent. As the test chemicals for exposure experiments, toluene and LMCS (Low-molecular-weight cyclo-dimethyl-siloxane) were used. Shattered or cut silicon wafer was mainly used for adsorbent of chemical components. GC/MS (Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer) was used to analyze ionic compounds. The experiments were conducted using the conditions of ionizer (+, -, off), and electric field (+, -, off) as the basis. For the results of the exposure experiment, which was required in order to select the correct test compounds and the test surface, comminuted silicon wafer maintain a higher possibility of adsorption compared to the cut silicon wafer in regards to processed silicon product. Results of the measurement using comminuted Si-wafer surface which was charged with same polarity of ionic compounds, the increase in LMCS'adsorption was confirmed in comparison with the results of the measurement within the non charged condition.

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In supporting the prevention of global warming, highly energy efficient cold/hot water-saving equipment has been developed and it has been increasingly introduced in houses. Especially, when it comes to the hot-water supply equipment in Japan, which takes up 30[%] of total domestic energy consumption per household, cold/hot-water saving with single-lever faucets, which very much relies on how individuals use such faucets, is put to the test.
The purpose of this study is to propose a method for using such faucets and the necessity of energy conservation to be considered in product development. To be more specific, this paper discussed the following three points: (1) Identify the operating position of a single lever by season, (2) Identify levels of understanding about the operating position of a single lever, (3) Identify the operating position of a single lever when operated by residents in each season and levels of residents' understanding.

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In this paper, firstly, the evaluation method of airflow volume and ventilation load in consideration of characteristics of the change in responses to frost and wind pressure is proposed. Then, the estimate of airflow volume and ventilation load is tried. As the result, the followings are described; wind pressure and frost will cause to increase infiltration draft or air leakage and ventilation load. Ventilation performances will be affected by air tightness or region. Therefore it is important to plan the ventilation system suitably for styles of house and region by using an evaluation method like the proposed one.

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Thermal storage in building mass (TSBM), which stores thermal energy in building components such as floor slabs or structural beams by AHUs, discharges the stored thermal energy mainly in the morning and seems to be suitable to reduce large thermal load which emerges in the stand-up period of HVAC operation for heating. A field study in winter conducted in an office building located in Sapporo, Japan, shows the temperature descent of floor slabs in weekend and the cause was supposed to be the cooling by outdoor climate. It leads to the increase of stored thermal load on Monday morning, which was verified also by the increase of electrical consumption of HVAC heat source. The thermal energy supplied by AHUs in storage period was larger than that in normal operation in the field study and the AHU capacity for TSBM will be minimized when the minimum hourly thermal load of the storage period is equal to that of the normal operation period. A simulation study was conducted to show the method to minimize the AHU capacity. The study also shows that the minimum capacity brings the minimum increase of the thermal energy supplied by HVAC system.

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This paper describes thermal characteristics of a water flow type floor heating system using heat pumps. An experimental system is constructed in an environmental test room. It has a heating room with a floor area of 11.58 m² and a heat loss coefficient of 2.35 W/(m²·K). The heat balance in the experimental system is observed. Higher efficiency of space heating can be seen at cases using floor heating panels with a thinner top layer and lower thermal resistance materials. These panels also show adaptive room temperatures above 20°C even at a lower water temperature about 30°C. The result reveals that such system may be a possible solution to provide energy saving as well as thermal comfort by the use of heat pumps.

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A field measurement was conducted to investigate the thermal environment of an office with preset temperature of 28°C in summer. A questionnaire survey on the workers was also conducted during the measurement to evaluate the effect of the thermal environment on productivity. The air temperature tended to be higher in the area with high density of heat sources. The air temperature could reach over 30°C at the time when the air-conditioning system started its operation in the mornings. Fluctuation of the supply air temperature was observed after the room temperature reached to the setting. To elevate the preset temperature in the existing buildings, systematic and operational adjustments of HVAC systems may be necessary for proper thermal environmental control. From the questionnaire, over 70% of the workers were thermally dissatisfied in July and August. The correlations were obtained that when the workers are thermally satisfied, the self-estimated performance is higher and the level of fatigue is lower.

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Apartment house is given a sizable portion in housing stock in Japan. Improvement of energetic consideration in apartment house can be as a part of principal energy strategy for residential sector as well as existing maintenance and management.
In this study, the electric and gas consumption of dwelling unit is derived from the factors of time lag of behaviors based on survey on human activity patterns. In addition, electric consumption of elevator and pump is simulated based on aforementioned time trajectory of usage pattern. Consumption of lighting in common space is also estimated by the field measurement campaigns. The total energy consumption of standard type is this study is estimated 8127GJ/year. Electric consumption is positioned 68% of total energy consumption. Electric consumption in common space is estimated 1054GJ/year, positioned 21% of total building consumption.

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