Thermische Behaglichkeit nach DIN EN ISO 7730 - Ein Ansatz zur vereinfachten Datenaufnahme und Berechnung für die Bewertung von Bürogebäuden

Thermal comfort according to DIN EN ISO 7730 - A simplified method to collect and calculate data for the evaluation of commercial buildings.

In numerous publications and research projects concerning energy conservation, resource efficiency, and the almost universal field of sustainability, the term "comfort" is often mentioned as a partial aspect of the named topics. There are a growing number of scientific papers in which the quality of work environment in office buildings - and with this the associated user satisfaction - is closely linked to the productivity of the workforce. It was found, that during the lifecycle of a commercial building the employee costs exceed the total costs of the building (including costs for planning, construction and operation of the building) by several times. Therefore, a lack of quality in the work environment is a factor that investors and property managers will consider and that might also have a negative effect for the profitability of an object. Especially in urban areas with a growing oversupply of (aging) office spaces this aspect has to be considered.
First of all, thermal comfort is an indifferent body condition in which neither an excessive feeling of cold (freezing) or heat (sweating) is given. In this context, thermal comfort describes the relationship of different physiological states and the more or less subjective feelings of humans. This fact is of great importance for the evaluation of thermal comfort, because the goal of investors, property owners and managers must be satisfied users (in their subjective measure). Such satisfaction can be achieved through appropriate objective investigations of the indoor environment and valid constructional and technical measures.
The target of the following paper was to investigate how "comfort" can be described and measured in existing office buildings by simple means, and how measures can be derived that might lead to an improvement of the work environment quality. Therefore, in a first step the criteria of comfort, defined in certain standards and guidelines, were analyzed with regard to evaluation methods for an application in practice. Then, the theoretical findings for the evaluation of comfort were used in existing office buildings and reviewed.