Workshop on emerging low-energy cooling and ventilation solutions

A workshop titled “Cooling, Climate Change, and COVID” was organized online by Assist. Prof. Dorit Aviv from the University of Pennsylvania and Assist. Prof. Adam Rysanek from the University of British Columbia on December 1st, 2021. The main scope of the workshop was to feature and discuss alternative cooling and ventilation solutions needed for the future of building infrastructure to cope with the increased demand in cooling and associated GHG emissions connected to global warming, urbanization, economic development, and population growth. In addition, in the face of the environmental health crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, the challenging question was how to provide healthy indoor environments while avoiding an uptick in energy consumption.

Many researchers active in low-energy cooling and ventilation solutions participated in the online event, including Assist. Prof. Dolaana Khovalyg, heading TEBEL at EPFL. Her talk highlighted the need to reduce the cooling demand by developing personalized conditioning solutions.To transition towards individualized conditioning, measurements of human physiological changes are necessary at the human body level to better predict the state of local thermal sensation. She pointed at the need for non-invasive, scalable sensing solutions to continuously monitor individuals’ thermal state in buildings and apply personalized cooling actions accordingly.