An Automatic Mobile Sensing Platform for Indoor Environmental Quality Assessments

Since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, the amount of time that individuals spend indoors has increased to approximately 95%, emphasizing the need for indoor environments that promote health and productivity. However, few communities are aware of the connection between the critical importance of Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) and the health, productivity, and comfort of the occupants, as well as the collective performance of an organization. As a result, most public buildings, especially school buildings, fail to meet the minimum IEQ standards required by building codes and are generally far below the recommended levels by many health agencies. To improve IEQ conditions, the first step is to measure, monitor, and evaluate the current IEQ conditions of the target buildings. IEQ assessments include two components: quantitative measurements of physical attributes and qualitative occu?pant satisfaction surveys. Quantitative measurements and monitoring of physical attributes include indoor air quality (IAQ), thermal quality, lighting quality, acoustic quality, and spatial quality. Currently, qualitative occupant satisfaction surveys aim to collect subjective feedback from occupants on IEQ-related issues in the built environment. Traditional methodologies for assessing IEQ from both objective and subjective perspectives present certain limitations. In the case of objective assessments, which involve measuring and monitoring IEQ physical attributes, the field measurement process requires substantial time and effort. This is due to the necessity for practitioners and researchers with specialized knowledge of IEQ to operate handheld devices to gather data. In addition, monitoring IEQ attributes is typically based on a stationary sensor network, which is limited in its ability to accurately represent the spatial characteristics of IEQ attributes due to its sparse nature. In terms of subjective evaluations, conventional methods include surveys, questionnaires, interviews, and direct observations. Although these ...