Proposal of comfort classification indexes suitable for both single environments and whole buildings

One of the primary objectives of the 2002/91/EC European Directive [1], recently replaced by the 2010/31/EU European Directive 121, is referred to the need of drawing up a methodology leading to buildings energy certification, which allows evaluation of both energy consumptions and polluting impacts and takes into account both comfort conditions of indoor environments and outdoor climate. Indeed, the connection between comfort quality of indoor environments and energy performance of building is firmly remarked by the Directive, pointing out that the achievement of high levels of comfort quality involves an increase of energy demand. In this context, the need of connecting building energy performances to the comfort quality of living spaces has focused the researchers' attention on the development of procedures aimed at classifying indoor environments under the point of view of comfort conditions. In this paper, in order to try to suggest a simple approach to the indoor environmental quality classification, a proposed methodology will be presented. It could be applicable to either single environments or whole building and is based on the calculation of two indoor quality indexes: the Environment Quality Index, EQI, and the Building Quality Index, BQI. Starting from the values of the EQI and BQI indexes, the proposed methodology allows the classification of the indoor comfort level, referring it to a seven values scale. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.