What if every building you entered was filtering out airborne pathogens, harmful particulates, and actively monitoring the microbial particles in the air all while saving energy? We have a new paper out on how standards can be updated to require safer air in energy efficient buildings: Toward Integrating Numeric Disease Transmission Risk in Energy Codes and Ventilation Standards
There are currently no standards for buildings like offices or schools to limit disease transmission or monitor their microbes, but with the COVID-19 pandemic, the critical need for disease risk-reduction and the removal of viruses from the air has become apparent.
Current ventilation, humidity, and filtration standards are focused on reducing energy consumption while keeping occupants comfortable, but there are no codes for common indoor spaces that standardize approaches to contaminants like wildfire smoke and viral transmission.
SafeAirSpaces is a simulator developed by our own Hooman Parhizkar, as well as Dr. Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg, Dr. Richard Corsi, and Dr. Charles Haas, that illustrates the disease transmission risk implications of building designs and building operations, such as accounting for the volume and rate of fresh air moving into a space and how that impacts the risk of transmitting COVID-19.
Our paper illustrates how SafeAirSpaces can be plugged into EnergyPlus– a building energy assessment tool, to provide “high risk” and “low risk” modes of HVAC operation to save energy, and we hope to make buildings smarter and safer as we adapt to climate change, pandemics, and air pollution.