This paper presents the application of Internet of Things (IoT) Technology and Building Energy Management System (BEMS) within the Marylebone Campus of the University of Westminster, located in central London, to improve the environmental performance of the existing building as well as enhance the learning experience on energy and sustainability. Sixty IoT sensors connected to minicomputers were planned to be deployed within three floors of the building to continuously measure the real-time environmental parameters, such as dry-bulb temperature, relative humidity, illuminance level, carbon dioxide, and sound levels. Experimental workshops were also arranged with undergraduate and post-graduate students at their classrooms using IoT sensors, portable Bluetooth sensors and online questionnaires to increase awareness of the effect of environmental and behavioural changes on energy saving through real-time visualisation. Users’ subjective feedback on their workplace was also collected through Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) questionnaire surveys. The results show the effectiveness of IoT systems and BEMS in supplying the building users and management with high-resolution, low-cost data acquisition systems highlighting the existing challenges and future scopes. The study also documents the process and the improvement in students’ awareness of environmental and energy performance of their building through IoT data visualizations and POE.
This paper presents two workable solutions that can significantly improve the indoor thermal environment within the workspaces in existing ready-made garment (RMG) factories in the tropical climatic context of Bangladesh. The research involved field studies in three multi-storey factory buildings, semistructured interviews with workers and owners and simulation studies. Field data indicated that the effective window-opening size of existing buildings and limiting the ventilation strategy to occupied hours caused overheating of the indoor environment. Among a list of proposals, the building owners saw value in implementing two solutions (i.e. altering existing window type to one with a higher effective opening area and adopting a night-time ventilation strategy) in their existing buildings as well as proposed new buildings. To quantify the benefits of these two interventions, a validated simulation study on one of the buildings was conducted. The findings confirm that these two solutions can provide reductions of up to 23% in overheated hours during operational time and in so doing, improve workers' thermal comfort and well-being.
IntroductionIn the tropical climatic context of Bangladesh, most of the workers in ready-made garment (RMG) factories suffer from discomfort in their workspaces and a range of health problems due to the high indoor air temperature and poor air distribution (Authors 2015; Authors 2014;Fatemi 2014). The workspaces include cutting, sewing and finishing sections. Workers' thermal discomfort also hampers productivity (Fatemi 2014), resulting in additional workload to meet production targets without any financial benefit. These workspaces, with a deep floor-plan and low ceiling heights, usually employ forced cross-ventilation using auxiliary extractor fans located on the external walls. However, the existing active ventilation strategies do not meet the thermal comfort needs of the workers with significant overheating observed in the middle part of the floor plate (Authors 2015) even in the presence a significant difference in 'wind pressure coefficient' between the inlet and outlet openings (CIBSE 2005) due to mechanical ventilation.Previous theoretical studies and empirical evidence suggest that improving the indoor thermal environment and air quality through the adaptation of available passive technologies can improve health, productivity and wellbeing of the workers in workspace offering financial benefits to both workers and factory owners (Fisk 2000;Hobday and Dancer 2013;Mahbob et al. 2011;Srinavin and Mohamed 2003). In particular, improving the thermal environment of RMG factories helps to reduce production errors up to 1.88% (Fatemi 2014), which may offer added commercial benefit to factory owners and their international buyers. In addition, effective implementation of natural ventilation in the factories can provide a natural environment for the workers and reduce electricity energy consumption and consequent greenhouse gas emissions (Wijewardane and Jayasinghe 2008). By adopting ...
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