Overall Comfort and Satisfaction Prediction Models in Educational Building

Students in classrooms are exposed to different stimuli related to the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) with consequences for their health, productivity and well-being. The effects of the IEQ on their comfort and satisfaction could be assessed considering the comfort domains (i.e., indoor air quality, thermal, visual and acoustic) separately, or by adopting an overall approach. This study aims to increase the understanding of how students' overall comfort and satisfaction can be predicted from their judgment expressed for the single domains. During two field studies, one conducted in a high school located in Rome (Dataset I) and the other in Bolzano (Dataset II), multi-domain right-here-right-now questionnaires have been administered in 63 classrooms while recording carbon dioxide, indoor air temperature, illuminance level and sound pressure level. Students expressed their comfort and satisfaction by both single domain and considering their overall experience. 957 questionnaires were collected. Dataset I has been processed to build a new model for predicting occupants' overall comfort and satisfaction based on students' (i) comfort and satisfaction votes expressed in each domain and their overall comfort and satisfaction votes. The model has been validated through two approaches, i.e., K-Fold cross validation and external validation with Dataset II.