For fire evacuation safety in office buildings that include small rooms and where many occupants cannot directly see fire or smoke, fire alarms play a significant role in situational awareness and decision-making pertaining to evacuation. We conducted experiments to examine how individuals feel sound of fire alarms at different size of rooms using a mobile VR head-mounted display. We revealed the effect of early warning and evacuation-directive voice alarms installed at different places, e.g., a large office room and a small meeting room. In addition, we discussed the awareness process of occupants considering the configuration of smoke detection system.
We conducted a group comparison study using a VDT in one of three conditions: 1)solid wood, 2)veneer, 3)wood look sheet vinyl to investigate the effects of recognition of wall material wooden interior space on physiology, psychology response and impression evaluations.
The subjects who recognized the wood look sheet vinyl space had a longer mean error counts and shift time between the tasks in the ATMT and more mean of instability and uneasiness in the Subjective Fatigue Questionnaire.
Analytical result suggested that VDT workers' recognition of wall material can effect on fatigue, motivation, physiology, psychology response and impression.
The purpose of this study is to clarify the influence of visual information from space interior on Apparent Source Widthfor indoor sound field, and to acquire useful knowledge in architectural acoustic design. ASWs were measured when auditory stimuli which contain sound fields of different LFs and visual stimuli which consist of VR images of space interior, were presented to subjects individually or simultaneously. ASWs for auditory stimuli were observed to be changed by visual cues, and expected LF for each space was estimated. The change is assumed to be caused by supplementary effect bridging the gap from expected LF.
The purpose of this study is to propose a simple estimation method of daylighting environment based on the daylight amount from a window in a residential room. As daylight amount can be calculated from solar radiation relatively easily, this method has the advantage of being able to link thermal and daylighting environment evaluation. We chose the vertical eye illuminance as an index for the evaluation of indoor daylighting environment in order to consider the visual and non-visual effects. The prediction formulae of the vertical eye illuminance were built and their accuracy was verified from annual daylighting simulations.
Several new spatial brightness evaluation methods have been proposed in recent years. Although these new methods provide us to evaluate spatial brightness which is difficult by measuring horizontal illuminance, there is little agreement for a room with uneven distribution of light. In this study, we examined the relationship between spatial brightness, suitability of spatial brightness and luminance distribution for such a non-uniformly illuminated room. We found applied conditions of averaged luminance to estimate spatial brightness or suitability of spatial brightness for uneven lighting environment. We also found that suitability of spatial brightness correlated to spatial brightness evaluation well.
This study aimed to evaluate the bedroom thermal environment of older adults and to clarify the effects of the thermal environment on sleep using a longitudinal field survey. More than 90% of bedroom temperatures were higher than the recommended standard bedroom temperature for older people (23-27℃). However, most participants rated their bedroom environment as cool and comfortable. A high bedroom temperature, above29℃, decreased sleep quality, subjective sleep evaluation, and extended time in bed. Adjusting to an appropriate bedroom thermal environment is important for maintaining sleep quality and preventing excessive sleep duration.
In this paper, the authors introduce the calculation method for the heat extraction/injection coefficient of ground heat exchangers (GHEs) (heat extraction/injection rate per length and temperature difference) according to the operating conditions of ground source heat pump system. Then, the heat extraction/injection coefficients of GHEs with the different specifications and the different system operating conditions were calculated. The result indicated that the heat extraction/injection coefficient with the operating time of the GSHP system per day of 8 h was approx. 1.6 times compared to the coefficient with the operating time of the GSHP system per day of 24 h.
This paper focused on the impact of lifestyle changes in response to the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) on the electricity demand of 1339 detached houses from October 2020 to March 2021. Analyzing with the lifestyle questionnaire survey, twelve months after the first state of emergency for COVID-19 at April 2020, “working from home” was the only factor that increased household power consumption for 11% and the other factors were gone. Space heating power consumption in this period did not increase significantly. Lifestyle changes have affected household timely electricity demand and increased self-consumption of renewable energy of photovoltaic power generation systems.