Proposed metrics for IAQ in low-energy residential buildings

The overall objective of the International Energy Agency project, Energy in Buildings and Communities Annex68“IndoorAirQualityDesignandControlinLow-energyResidential Buildings,”¹ is to provide a scientific basis for optimal and practically applicable design and control strategies for high IAQ in residential buildings. An obstacle for close integration of energy and IAQ strategies in building design and optimization is the lack of an index that can quantitatively describe indoor air quality (IAQ) and be compared with indices that describe energy performance. The first phase of the Annex 68 project was to develop such an IAQ index for low-energy residential buildings. The purpose of the metric was to define the pollutants that should be modeled when hygrothermal processes are simulated and to assess the performance of the solutions and their effectiveness.