Indoor Environment in Educational Buildings: Assessing Natural Ventilation

Abstract

The built indoor environment has a high impact on people’s health and performance. The recent events arising from the COVID-19 global pandemic have stressed that good indoor air quality is crucial, especially in public buildings (for instance, school and university buildings) where the occupation density is high. International public organizations claimed that educational buildings must put in place a testing strategy and ensure adequate air renewal to adopt effective measures that mitigate airborne diseases transmission. This study analyses the methods used to characterise natural ventilation performance in educational buildings. The current body of knowledge is summarised by using the studies published between 2008 and 2022. The results show that the number of publications increased in the last two years (2021–2022). This study also shows that most studies that analysed ventila-tion rate in naturally ventilated educational buildings focused on primary schools and were conducted in temperate climates. In addition, the results showed that the decay method and the transient mass balance equation method were the most used to evaluate the effectiveness of natural ventilation strategies in educational buildings.