Recently, enrollments in nursery schools have become higher and higher. This is largely due to the social progress of women, with the increasing number of working mothers. Additionally, the number of three-generation households is decreasing. Nursery schools are traditionally low-rise structures, with a playground, but deregulation of the law now allows for the placement of nursery schools in middle floors of high-rise buildings. In Japan, the ages of nursery school students are generally from infancy to five-years old, which means that they can't evacuate the premises by themselves during a fire, so we must research ways to evacuate them safely. And the scheme of planning safe evacuations from buildings has not been sufficiently researched, so we have investigated the practice of fire drills and have interviewed teachers and students of nursery schools. The following is what we have learned:
 (1)Characteristics of evacuation ;drills of nursery schools: Students evacuate in class groups, lead by their teachers, who provide the indications. Time is needed for evacuation preparation (setting up strollers, gathering infants and preparing to carry them out, and giving instructions regarding exiting, etc., ) and before starting evacuation, and time for confirming the numbers of students, and waiting time is needed when they are evacuating, so these times must be considered in the calculation of evacuation time.
 (2)The characteristics of evacuation abilities of nursery school students : Infants (up to one-year old), and students who can't easily walk by themselves must be carried by a nurse or other adults, which makes evacuation movements and management after evacuation more manageable. Two-year-old students are able to walk alright on their own but cannot sufficiently grasp the situation. It's difficult to follow the teachers' instructions, so a lot of assistances are need. Children aged three and over can, of course, walk even better, and can grasp the severity of a fire. But they tend to walk more slowly as they feel frightened in cases when they are at earlier age, or they have to take an escape route that they are not familiar with. In order to shorten evacuation time, older students should evacuate first, as they can walk faster than younger students, thus their escape time won't be hindered by slower evacuees.
 (3)Notes of buildings that include a nursery school: Regarding the situation of using stairways for evacuation, there are many points of concern regarding the safety of children. Because there are many dangerous points related to stairways, such as the fact that stairways often arouse fear in younger students during emergency evacuation, and as a result they walk more slowly. Consequently, older students try to pass the younger, slower students. Especially in cases when a nursery school is on a middle floor of a multi-use building, there is a possibility that confusion is caused among the evacuating children who walk slowly, along with their teachers, as evacuating people from other facilities mix with people evacuating from the nursery school. Thus, having a dedicated set of stairs for children is better. In addition, nursery schools that are in existing buildings that were not designed to accommodate nursery schools, have higher handles and the height of steps rise.
 (4)Decreasing evacuation route length: Due to the fact that nursery school students' bodies and minds are not fully developed, their circumstances during a fire are more severe than those for adults. Thus, nursery schools should be on lower floors of buildings or should have their own buildings. Also the distance from the rooms to the temporary evacuation place should be as short as possible

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 A model for fire risk assessment of a mid-rise or high-rise buildings is developed considering seismic damage of six fire safety equipment systems including sprinkler system, mechanical smoke exhaust system, fire door, fire detector, fire extinguisher, and indoor fire hydrant. The model consists of three sub-models, namely, (a) the two-zone smoke transport model, (b) the model for fire-fighting activity of occupants, and (c) the network-based model for evacuation of occupants. The two-zone smoke transport model predicts smoke transport inside of a building until the fire ends either by extinguishment by fire-fighting activity of occupants or by burn out of entire fire load. Activation time of a sprinkler system and a fire detector is predicted based on the RTI model considering the effect of ceiling jet in the two-zone environment. The fire-fighting model determines success and failure of fire-fighting activity by comparing the maximum size of fire extinguishable by an equipment, Z_cr, with the size of fire at the time fire-fighting starts, Z(t_FF). Start time of fire-fighting activity by occupants, t_FF, depends upon the activation time of fire detector. The evacuation model predicts movement of individual occupants on a route network with the room as a node and the door as a link. Failure of evacuation of an occupant is determined by comparing the smoke layer height, H_S, with the critical smoke layer height. Damage of a fire door not only allows the leakage of smoke from a fire room to adjacent rooms, but may also block a passage of occupants. Availability of each fire safety equipment systems is analyzed by the fault trees and their probabilistic parameters such as damage ratio of the systems and occurrence probability of power outage under a certain seismic condition is modeled based on the records of past earthquakes.
 As a case study, the model is applied to a hypothetical nine-story building with building area of 1,144m² and its post-earthquake fire risk is assessed by the Monte Carlo simulation. Among the six fire safety equipment systems considered in the present model, availability of sprinkler system, mechanical exhaust system, and indoor fire hydrant were more sensitive to seismic shaking compared to the others. This is attributed not only to the damage of the system itself, but also to availability of power, water for fire-fighting, and probability of occupants engaging in fire-fighting activity. Exceedance frequency of the fire damage represented by the smoke vitiated area and the number of evacuation-failed occupants showed that the fire damage remains minor in most of the cases even if occurred. However, the proportion of major damage increases with the increase of seismic intensity. While the maximum smoke vitiated areas for each seismic intensity converged into a same degree, the maximum number of evacuation-failed occupants varied. This indicates that the range of human loss expands as the unavailability of fire safety equipment systems increases.

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 In the cooling/heating loads simulation for buildings, it is too difficult to estimate the solar heat gain through the windows with shading devices using the detailed and complicated calculation method (e.g. JIS A 2103) and the off-normal optical characteristic parameters in each time. This paper proposed a simplified methodology for calculating hourly or daily accumulated solar heat gain through the windows with shading devices using relation between solar heat gain coefficients of glazing with and without shading devices. In addition, this paper showed the accuracy of proposed models. As the results of this study, the following conclusions were obtained;

 (1) There is relationship of quadratic approximation passing through the origin between solar heat gain coefficients of the glazing with and without shading device.
 (2) In the case of external roller shade, the hourly and daily accumulated solar heat gain through windows of various type of combination of glazing and external roller shade can be calculated by the simplified formula that has explanatory variables for the solar heat gain coefficients of windows without roller shade and solar transmittance and reflectance of the roller shade.
 (3) In the case of internal roller shade, the hourly and daily accumulated solar heat gain through windows of various type of combination of glazing and internal roller shade can be calculated by the simplified formula that has explanatory variables for the solar heat gain coefficients of windows without roller shade and solar reflectance of the roller shade.
 (4) In the case of either external or internal venetian blinds, the hourly and daily accumulated solar heat gain through windows of various type of combination of glazing and venetian blind can be calculated by the simplified formula that has explanatory variables for the solar heat gain coefficients of windows without venetian blind and solar reflectance of the blind slat. However, in the case of the slat angle of external venetian blind that there is a lot of direct transmitted solar radiation through blind layer, the daily accumulated solar heat gain cannot be calculated with high accuracy. Therefore, the model should be improved in the future.

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 Sleeping is one of the most important elements of human behaviour in the domestic residence. However, sleep disorders are one of the key issues in recent years. This might be related to the various environmental factors. Sleep disorders involve not only thermal discomfort but can also lead to reduced performance and general health deterioration. To improve the sleeping environment, we need to investigate the thermal environment of bedrooms and thermal comfort of the residents. Thereby, we need to research to occupant behaviour. In this research, we focus on methods of cooling and fan usage, window opening and clothing adjustment. There are some problems when we use the active controls. Especially, we need to minimize the cooling and fan use for energy saving. It is important to consider not only energy saving but also the death rate due to heat stroke when adjusting the thermal conditions. Sometime people may set the cooling temperature without knowing their own comfort temperature very well. Thus, in order to control the indoor thermal environment properly, we need to investigate the comfort temperature of the residents. In order to investigate the thermal comfort, occupant behaviour and depth of sleep in bedrooms, we have measured the air temperature and relative humidity in 10 houses, and conducted a survey of thermal comfort, occupant behaviour and depth of sleep survey with 25 residents, obtaining 3,135 votes. Survey period is from 10 August 2013 to 9 August 2014.
 The major findings are as follows: 1) The bedrooms' air temperature was very well related with outdoor air temperature in Free Running (FR) mode. 2) The residents feel comfortable expect for winter in FR mode. 3) The comfort temperature was 19.1 °C in spring, 27.0 °C in summer, 22.9 °C in autumn and 16.1 °C in winter in FR mode. And, we could express the comfort temperature as a function of running mean outdoor air temperature as one of the adaptive models. This model may prove to be an effective tool for predicting and informing control strategies for the indoor comfort temperature in bedroom. 4) It seemed that the residents use mechanical cooling or heating units with setting off-timer and they use mechanical fans without setting off-timer. 5) Difference was observed in occupant behaviour by sex or age. 6) The proportions of mechanical fan, cooling and heating use and window opening as the function of outdoor or indoor air temperature were obtained from Logistic Regression Analysis. 7) There was no distinctive relationship between the depth of sleep given by the subjective votes and indoor air temperature.

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 CO₂ included in exhaled breath is often used as a tracer gas when estimation of ventilation aspect in buildings with occupants is performed. In Japan, CO₂ production rate written in JIS A 14061974, which revised in 1974, has been referred for the estimation. The CO₂ production rate calculation formula given by ASTM D6245-12 can be referred also, however, the formula is based on westerner adult data. Hence, based on Japanese subjects' exhaled breath data obtained by using Douglas bag method with approximately total 170 points, equations for recent Japanese CO₂ production rate are developed in this study. Moreover, an equation, whose variables are occupants' height & weight, gender, age and Met, is used for estimating ventilation aspects in single zone with occupants aiming at accuracy testing.
 Firstly, a simple equation (9) is derived with regression analysis using 23 subjects and 3 testing activities data. The equation requires A_D (Japanese body surface area given by equation (6)) Met and C_G (coefficient of gender as male: 1 and female: 0).
 Secondly, aiming at expanding the targets, equation (9) is transformed and verified by using additional testing whose conditions are shown in Table7 and 8. The obtained 20s males' exhaled breath data is used to derive the equation (10) whose coefficient of deamination is larger than the equation (9) shown in Fig. 4. Then, the equation (10) is added a variable C_a (coefficient of age given by table9) and is transformed into the equation (11) whose coefficient of deamination is larger than the equation (9) shown in Fig. 5. Also, the equation (10) is added a variable C_g (coefficient of gender male: 1.0 and female: 0.73 determined by Table9) and is transformed into equation (12) whose coefficient of deamination is larger than the equation (9) shown in Fig. 6. As a result, the equation (13) is derived and its coefficient of deamination is larger than the equation (9) shown in Fig. 7.
 With substituting CO₂ production rate given by the equation (13), ASTM and JIS, into the equation (14), calculated CO₂ concentration are compared to the measured value obtained in single zones with the conditions shown in Table11 with employing testing instruments shown in Table10. The experimental results are shown in Fig. 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14. From the experimental results, calculated CO₂ concentration of present work shows the closest to the measured value compared with the other standards’ value. Therefore, these results can allow estimating more correct ventilation aspects with Japanese occupants.

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 Infectious disease is transferred through 3 main routes, contact, droplet and airborne infection. It is known commonly that contact infection causes many of health-care associated infection. Control of contact infection can be achieved by maintenance of hand hygiene and cleaning of hospital interiors. However, the effectiveness of hand hygiene maintenance depends on individual conscientiousness. High frequency contact surfaces have not been clearly defined by commonly used guidelines, nor have effective cleaning methods been established. Therefore, it is important to use scientific methods to estimate the degree of contamination on the surfaces in examination rooms in order to determine which areas should be intensively cleaned.
 A field measurement was conducted using an Adenosine tri-phosphate (ATP) measurement method (EnSURE® & SuperSnap™; Hygiena) in examination rooms. We set the standard values on the basis of the case study by NHS Foundation Trust as RLU (Relative Light Unit) per 100 cm². A measurement of less than 800 RLU is considered clean, 801-1599 RLU is caution, greater than 1600 RLU is recommended for immediate re-cleaning when the measurement accuracy of the equipment was taken into consideration.
 The attitude survey was conducted as objects of medical and cleaning staff who are assigned to the visitor examination room. The aim of questionnaire is to establish connections between conscientiousness about surface contamination of medical and cleaning staff and the substance of surface contamination.
 The results of a field measurement reveal that the ATP value of the patient's chair handrail after the work occurred in a significantly higher range than those of samples before the work (p < 0.05). The handrail of the doctor's chair has a significantly greater contamination than the patient's chair (before and after the work: p < 0.01) because the doctor's chair was about twofold greater contact frequency in the mean. The handrail of the doctor's chair and the outside doorknob were evaluated as high contaminated before the start and after the end of medical service. The doctor's chair had uneven surface seems one of the reason of its high-contamination. The levels of contamination in these areas might be improved by changing the timing and/or the frequency of cleaning. The inside doorknob is susceptible to contamination greater than the outside doorknob because the inside was strongly gripped to open the door. It was suggested that not only the contact frequency but also the features of surfaces and the strength of contacting pressure make difference in contamination.
 The attitude survey showed that medical staff are attentive to high touching surface but cleaning staff are attentive to dust-collecting surface. Surface contamination level can be decreased by changing cleaning staff consciousness.
 In this study, investigation was conducted before the start and after the end of medical service but the effectiveness of a single cleaning is not clearly evaluated. However, it will be possible to discuss the change of contamination in the work time by comparison observed value between before and after work.

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