Research database

The building sector plays a pivotal role to achieve the EU targets in terms of ecological transition, while being fundamental in determining people health, wellbeing and comfort. A huge effort has been done in the last decades to increase the energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality (IEQ) of buildings, however a performance gap between actual operational performance and expected results is present, due to several factors pertaining the building design, construction and operational stages. The lack of widespread multi-domain studies, investigating mutual interrelations between different aspects of IEQ and between the occupants’ responses and interaction with the surrounding environment, and the lack of involvement of the occupants in R&D&I activities, reducing acceptability and integration of innovative technologies. The MIRABLE project aims to develop a methodology to reduce this gap by designing, implementing and validating a measurement infrastructure for monitoring multi-domain indoor environmental conditions and occupants’ interaction in full scale Living Laboratories (LL). This will be designed for a laboratory under construction (H-IEQ LL), to realize a new working model of LL, to support human-centric research on IEQ and human-centric R&D&I activities supporting building sector technological development, in the perspective of achieving healthy and smart buildings, to reduce energy use and promote resilience. The new H-IEQ LL will be characterized by a very well controlled environment, and therefore the MIRABLE project is aimed to ensure the development of methodologies (i) to include the occupant as a sensor, actuator and driver of innovation in the research ecosystem, and (ii) for defining a ground-truth for wearable and low-grade sensors for IEQ measurements, concerning occupant immediate physical proximity (by means of wearable sensors), their feedbacks and interaction with the building systems. Such infrastructure should present: (i) minimum alteration of the perception of IEQ and disruption to the occupant; (ii) acceptable level of accuracy depending on the aim of R&D activity; (iii) ability to generate multi-domain data of the physical environment and of the occupant response; (iv) high level of discretization of the information (temporarily and spatially). MIRABLE project will develop through the following activities: (i) understand the best practices to monitor occupant comfort and interaction with buildings; (ii) identify, implement and metrologically characterize the sensors network for multi-domain monitoring of the physical environment and the wearable sensors to monitor occupant related quantities; (iii) design, implement and commission the measurement and data acquisition infrastructure; (iv) integrate, analyze and post-process the aggregated data oriented towards LL use cases demonstration; (v) disseminate results at EU and national level, and define possible exploitation strategies.

• I.N.RI.M. - ISTITUTO NAZIONALE DI RICERCA METROLOGICA
• POLITECNICO DI TORINO - AMMINISTRAZIONE CENTRALE - Coordinator