Toward multi-domain occupant-centric indoor-environmental quality indicators

Data generated through the simulation of buildings’ indoor-environmental conditions can be supplied to various human comfort models and thus support the anticipation of occupants’ response to and evaluation of indoor-environmental quality (IEQ). Whereas occupants’ IEQ evaluations are typically expressed in terms of domain-specific indicators (e.g., thermal, acoustic, auditory, olfactory), there has been a growing interest in developing combined (or aggregate, or total) IEQ indicators.

This paper discusses the potential and the limitations of a weighting-based method toward developing aggregate IEQ indicators. Specifically, the potential of a procedure for the empirically-based derivation of a set of weights is explored that, once applied to domain-specific quality votes, could yield the values of aggregate IEQ indicators.