The Effect of Seasons and Prevailing Environments on Adaptive Comfort Temperatures in Open Plan Offices

Creating comfortable indoor climates is one of fundamental functions of buildings and buildings use a large amount of energy to fulfill their function. Therefore, it is important to understand how and under what thermal environments, the occupants can achieve their comfort in their normal lives. This paper reports the results from a longitudinal field investigation, which has been conducted to reveal the comfort temperatures of occupants in open plan offices in summer, autumn and winter in Seoul, Korea and to identify the environmental factors that could affect comfort temperatures. The survey results confirm that comfort temperature would vary with seasons. This research provides the evidence to link the indoor and outdoor temperatures along with past thermal experience with comfort temperatures. An adaptive comfort model has been developed by this study for building occupants in Seoul, Korea based on the field investigation. Comparisons between the new adaptive comfort model and existing models have been also made. The establishment of an adaptive thermal comfort model for Seoul would have a significant impact on energy saving and for setting of thermal comfort standard for office buildings in Korea.