Adaptive Thermal Comfort: Foundations and Analysis [Paperback]

There has been widespread dissatisfaction with accepted models for predicting the conditions that people will find thermally comfortable in buildings. These models require knowledge about clothing and activity, but can give little guidance on how to quantify them in any future situation. This has forced designers to make assumptions about peoples future behaviour based on very little information and, as a result, encouraged static design indoor temperatures.

This book is the second in a three volume set covering all aspects of Adaptive Thermal Comfort. The first part narrates the development of the adaptive approach to thermal comfort from its early beginnings in the 1960s. It discusses recent work in the field and suggests ways in which it can be developed and modelled. Such models can be used to set dynamic, interactive standards for thermal comfort which will help overcome the problems inherited from the past. The second part of the volume engages with the practical and theoretical problems encountered in field studies and in their statistical analysis, providing guidance towards their resolution, so that valid conclusions may be drawn from such studies.

Part I: Foundations  1. Introduction to adaptive behaviour  2. Adaptive Beginnings  3. The emergence of the adaptive point of view  4. Summertime Overheating in Schools  5. The first international conference on thermal comfort  6. Adapting to enforced changes of temperature  7. The First Meta-analysis  8. Clothing outdoors and during sleep  9. Meta-analysis 2: relating climate to indoor comfort  10. The origin of the Oxford Thermal Comfort Unit  11. Fieldwork in Pakistan  12. Raising awareness of the adaptive approach  13. Beginning fieldwork at Oxford Brookes University  14. PMV and the resullc.