The former Taiki elementary school was built in the Samoto district, Susami town, Wakayama prefecture in 1903 and was extended in 1913. This paper demonstrates the value of the wooden elementary ...school as property of the region, based on the measuring survey of the school and the village landscape survey. The results show the following indications: Taiki elementary school is the oldest wooden school building in Wakayama prefecture. It shows characteristics of the village landscape. It has kept its authenticity for 117 years. It has been influenced by village conditions and building techniques of that time.
•Sustainable ventilation strategies are analysed for school buildings.•Air change rate can be enhanced 40% via stack ventilation.•Stack ventilation also provides promising decrease in indoor air ...temperature.•CO2 concentration in sustainably ventilated dorms is 800 ppm at 6:30 am.•CO2 concentration in ordinary dorms is 1800 ppm, which is undesired.
Developing technology and architectural design techniques have affected the field of architecture to a great extent. As a result, human comfort has become increasingly important in recent years. A natural ventilation cooling strategy which serves as the alternative to the air-conditioning system has been effectively employed in high-rise office buildings in western countries. This paper discusses the possibility of using natural ventilation strategy in school buildings. It evaluates some of the key issues associated with natural ventilation design and school buildings, including its the types, its working principles and limitations of passive ventilation, its effects and forms of natural ventilation when used in libraries, offices, auditoriums and dormitory buildings. This work also evaluates and how does the effects of architectural design on the passive ventilation such as orientation, depth of room, the atrium and solar chimney. Based on case studies on Queens building at De Montfort University, Liberty tower of Meiji University and simulation regarding ecological dormitory building in China. These three buildings have been selected to operate as simultaneously in different climatic and thermal comfort conditions. It is concluded that single-side ventilation and cross-ventilation can have good effect on cooling and improving air quality in school buildings with different functions as long as the height and depth of rooms are properly designed. Solar wall and solar chimney can also be employed to enhance natural ventilation performance based on the principle of stack effect.
•Seismic assessment of Italian schools to show different facets to practitioners.•Three building typologies and two site locations are considered.•Detailed assessment conducted using in-situ surveys ...and inventories.•Loss and collapse assessment performed for each scenario.•Critical discussion of existing approaches and frameworks provided.
Extensive damage to school buildings has been observed during past earthquakes in Italy and there is a need to better understand their potential vulnerability. As part of a national project to assess seismic risk in Italian schools, a database was compiled in terms of characteristics such as school location and construction typology. This paper examines a number of these buildings considered to be a representative sample of the Italian school building population. To quantify their seismic vulnerability, the induced damage with respect to increased shaking intensity need to be quantified. This characterisation of the building vulnerability, in combination with the seismic hazard, allows more informed, risk-based decisions to be made using performance metrics such as expected annual loss (EAL). This article outlines a case study application quantifying the EAL and collapse safety for three school buildings representative of the Italian school building stock. Detailed numerical models were developed using information collected during in-situ inspections in order to accurately represent the dynamic response of the school structures. To estimate economic losses, a structural and non-structural element inventory was compiled using in-situ survey information. This case study application is conducted in a systematic fashion to clearly illustrate the various details required to implement more advanced seismic assessment studies. Finally, a comparison is made with the seismic classification guidelines recently introduced in Italy to provide further insight into how these can be used to identify existing buildings vulnerable to excessive damage and potential collapse during earthquakes.
PCBs appear in school air because many school buildings were built when PCBs were still intentionally added to building materials and because PCBs are also present through inadvertent production in ...modern pigment. This is of concern because children are especially vulnerable to the toxic effects of PCBs. Here we report indoor and outdoor air concentrations of PCBs and OH-PCBs from two rural schools and four urban schools, the latter near a PCB-contaminated waterway of Lake Michigan in the United States. Samples (n = 108) were collected as in/out pairs using polyurethane foam passive air samplers (PUF-PAS) from January 2012 to November 2015. Samples were analyzed using GC/MS-MS for all 209 PCBs and 72 OH-PCBs. Concentrations inside schools were 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than outdoors and ranged from 0.5 to 194 ng/m
(PCBs) and from 4 to 665 pg/m
(OH-PCBs). Congener profiles were similar within each sampling location across season but different between schools and indicated the sources as Aroclors from building materials and individual PCBs associated with modern pigment. This study is the first cohort-specific analysis to show that some children's PCB inhalation exposure may be equal to or higher than their exposure through diet.
Indoor air quality in schools has a direct impact on the performance and wellbeing of students. In 2020, the health emergency required the reconsideration of ventilation conditions in indoor spaces, ...especially for educational buildings. This paper advances previous investigations to identify affordable, sustainable, and healthy designs for the refurbishment and new construction of schools, analysing the design parameters of the buildings and the indoor air quality in a representative sample of schools in the Mediterranean climate. The set of schools represents the regional composition regarding ages, daily scholar schedules and building designs. This study evaluates indoor CO2, TVOCs, PM 2.5 and PM 10, concentration profiles regarding indoor temperature, relative humidity, and occupation rates to identify adequate natural ventilation strategies. The results show a wide dispersion in CO2 concentrations, ranging between 4110 and 5366 ppm (peak values), TVOC mean concentration varies from 206.99 μg/m3 to 589.71 μg/m3 and particulate matter fractions ranging between 1.14 and 15.6 μg/m3 for PM 2.5 and 2.04 and 34.86 μg/m3 for PM 10 during the occupancy period. Concentrations are related to the effect of ventilation actions, the occupation rates and the metabolism of occupants. The combination of values shows how natural ventilation designs can assure adequate indoor air quality within comfort conditions under these mild climate conditions.
•COVID 19 showed up the importance of ventilation in educational buildings.•Pollutants are related to human occupation and the ventilation actions.•Studying existing schools allow to identify healthy ventilation designs.•Natural ventilation can assure indoor air quality and comfort conditions in mild climate.
•Heat load shifting in a real-life school building is demonstrated over a six-weeks period.•Schedule-based control efficiently shifts loads to off-peak periods, enhancing flexibility without ...sacrificing efficiency.•Pupil survey on thermal comfort perception shows no significant difference during the test period compared to business-as-usual operation.•Practical challenges in integrating simplified control approaches for building energy flexibility are outlined.
This work investigates the potential of simplified control approaches to deploy the building energy flexibility (BEF), here for the shifting of the space-heating load in a real-life educational building. The educational building is a passive house school where internal gains play an important role in the room thermal dynamics. It is equipped with a waterborne heat distribution system connected to district heating. The building is located in Elverum, Norway, having a strong heating-dominated climate. Focusing on schedule-based control strategies for pre-heating the building in the mornings, the study demonstrates significant load shifting to off-peak hours. The energy use during typical peak hours (7a.m. to 9a.m.) is reduced by 50% while the daily energy use is not increased significantly, highlighting the effectiveness of this simple approach. Occupant acceptance surveys among the pupils reveal no significant differences in thermal comfort perception between the periods with business-as-usual and schedule-based controls. Practical challenges in integrating simplified controls are highlighted and underscore the importance of considering energy flexibility during the building tendering and design phase. Bridging the gap between theoretical research and real-life applications, this research contributes to the advancement of energy-flexible operation of real-life buildings.
•Real-time data acquisition and structural health monitoring using wireless sensors.•Use and comparison of different sensors (i.e. MEMS and force-balance units).•Use of dynamic identification methods ...(i.e. output-only or forced-vibrations ones).•Calibration of models to reproduce the actual dynamic response (adjacent buildings).•Formulations to assess the seismic vulnerability of existing buildings.
This paper presents a methodology to perform the seismic vulnerability assessment of existing buildings. It starts with the acquisition of structural data from available construction drawings and field investigations to create a preliminary finite element model. Then, a wireless sensor network is used to collect the structural response at different locations. The sensors are connected and synchronized to each other to download and process data in real time. Modal identification methods, such as output-only and forced vibration techniques, are used to determine the modal characteristics and consequently calibrate the structural model for the subsequent vulnerability assessment. The proposed methodology is applied to a reinforced concrete school building in Italy. The seismic vulnerability is evaluated using a variety of alternative formulations. In particular, material nonlinearities and contact interaction at the structural joints are considered.
Otizmli Bireylere Yönelik Özel Eǧitim Yapilari Öǧrenim gördükleri fiziksel alanlar tüm çocuklar için deneyimlerini ve ruhsal durumlarini şekillendirmede etkin bir role sahiptir. Fakat özel ...gereksinimin türüne göre bu durum her zaman mümkün olmamaktadir.
BACKGROUNDClimate change legislation will require dramatic increases in the energy efficiency of school buildings across the UK by 2050, which has the potential to affect air quality in schools. We ...assessed how different strategies for improving the energy efficiency of school buildings in England and Wales may affect asthma incidence and associated healthcare utilization costs in the future. METHODSIndoor concentrations of traffic-related NO2 were modelled inside school buildings representing 13 climate regions in England and Wales using a building physics school stock model. We used a health impact assessment model to quantify the resulting burden of childhood asthma incidence by combining regional health and population data with exposure-response functions from a recent high-quality systematic review/meta-analysis. We compared the effects of four energy efficiency interventions consisting of combinations of retrofit and operational strategies aiming to improve indoor air quality and thermal comfort on asthma incidence and associated hospitalization costs. RESULTSThe highest childhood asthma incidence was found in the Thames Valley region (including London), in particular in older school buildings, while the lowest concentrations and health burdens were in the newest schools in Wales. Interventions consisting of only operational improvements or combinations of retrofit and operational strategies resulted in reductions in childhood asthma incidence (547 and 676 per annum regional average, respectively) and hospital utilization costs (£52,050 and £64,310 per annum regional average, respectively. Interventions that improved energy efficiency without operational measures resulted in higher childhood asthma incidence and hospital costs. CONCLUSIONThe effect of school energy efficiency retrofit on NO2 exposure and asthma incidence in schoolchildren depends critically on the use of appropriate building operation strategies. The findings from this study make several contributions to fill the knowledge gap about the impact of retrofitting schools on exposure to air pollutants and their effects on children's health.
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