Multidisciplinary US&R (Urban Search and Rescue) operations including medical care are needed to save lives of victims trapped under rubble in structural collapse disasters. In Japan, to improve response capabilities against such disasters, the leading response directors started challenges at their first comprehensive training facility for US&R. The authors collaborated with their actions, and in one of the US&R trainings, the authors applied an acoustic simulation during a full field exercise to provide a noisy environment simulating those of actual US&R operation site. The result of questionnaires to trainees and instructors shows that the acoustic simulation contributed to make the training be more effective, and it has remarkable effects especially for the aim of the training to examine the suitable protocol for Japan to establish command and control, safety, and communications during US&R operations.

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This study finally aims to clear the appropriate lighting conditions for kitchen work. In this report, we conducted the experiment on the subjective evaluation for cutting and peeling, under a variety of conditions of light source, illuminance, light color, and light direction. Subjects evaluated “Brightness”, “Visibility”, “Task Performance” and “Satisfaction”.
As the results, it was cleared that the evaluation for “Task Performance” is high, under conditions that task light is diffused light and high color temperature light, and that the evaluation of‘the satisfaction of lighting environment for kitchen work’was different by the light direction under the same conditions of illuminance on the work table.

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In order to save energy consumption for air-conditioning of buildings throughout those lifecycle, thermal performance of insulation materials applied in buildings should be kept in required value. On the other hand, there are many factors of ageing of insulation materials such as ambient temperature, vibration and moisture etc. In the previous paper, main factors of thermal performance change were discussed and several experimental results were shown. This paper examines the influences of moisture on thermal performance of various insulations based on three kinds of experiment. In first experiment, the relationship between equilibrium moisture content and thermal conductivity of fiber insulations is obtained. Second experiment is on the influence of gaseous moisture on fiber insulations and the results show that the dimension change of fiber insulations is small even in very humid condition. Third experiment is on the reversibility of thermal conductivity after the internal dew condensation process and the dry process, and the results show that many insulation materials have reversibility except for several plastic insulation foams.

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There are increasing reports of the evidence of Legionellosis. More rapid inspection of Legionella is necessary for minimizing damage to civilians. In this respect, on-site inspection method is required. This report provides the new method which can achieve on-site inspection of Legionella in water by combining the capture beads concentration and immunochromatography detection. In the concentration method, the beads which capture Legionella is used, and large volume sample (over 10L) is treated by peristaltic pump. Beads concentration method can be also applicable for culture method and detection by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The new method provides the practical solution for on-site legionella inspection.

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This study proposes methods of the multi-split type air-conditioning system model based on refrigerants thermodynamic properties that improve the computational speed reserving accuracy and extrapolability, and reduce physical parameters setting work. The purpose is to improve the quantitative performance assessment of the multi-split type air-conditioning system. The approximation method of refrigerative physical properties value using the neural network improves the computational speed. When the heat load of indoor equipment is input to the multi-split type air-conditioning system model, the amount of consumption energy is the output. It is found the proposed model can calculate approximate outputs in cases of not only JIS but other conditions.

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In this paper the energy characteristics of the building thermal mass storage system with the chilled water storage system is evaluated. A typical commercial building model is simulated by a computer and the influence of the regions, the daily weather and the heat load in the room is examined. The results show that the increase rate of the cooling load and the electricity consumption is high in the months of the low cooling load comparing with the non-storage case. And the building thermal mass storage system with the water storage reduces the primal energy consumption by 2.7% and the exhaust carbon dioxide by 10.4% in the optimized case in Tokyo.

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Distributed energy systems based on cogeneration offer great potential for saving energy by effectively utilizing waste heat from power generators. However, without the appropriate combination of machinery and operation, the expected performance cannot be achieved. But in this regard, it is quite difficult to determine the optimal combination of machinery and operation, the planned performance cannot be achieved. Some practical designs about distributed energy systems are constructed based on experimental results by professional system engineers. To spread the concept of distributed energy systems, quantitative design method is needed. Consequently, in this study, the optimization between machinery combination and its operation in order to minimize primary energy consumption is calculated using Genetic Algorithm (GA). Some cases are individual building and some are energy accommodation cases. The calculation results show that GA optimization led objective smaller than experimental designs. Moreover, the result of energy accommodation among buildings is smaller than that of total summation of individual buildings because effective waste heat was utilized among buildings effectively.

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Improvement of urban form for ventilation is one of the major measures to urban heat island; however, there is little practical information for urban planning about how much large urban redevelopment will make the effect on urban thermal environment. We conducted an experimental case study on ventilation with some large urban redevelopment projects in central area of Tokyo by wind tunnel experiment, numerical simulation and field measurement. These results are in good agreement with each other and we showed the effect of large urban redevelopment on urban thermal environment.

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