| 英文摘要: | The temperature in many office buildings is set according to a method from the 1960s. Consideration of the different metabolic rates of male and females is necessary to increase comfort and reduce energy consumption. Gender inequalities are increasingly being exposed. But many of us are surrounded by one such discrepancy much of the time without even knowing it — thermal comfort standards in office buildings. Changing the way buildings are heated and cooled to account for gender differences could significantly cut energy consumption, and ultimately reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In this issue of Nature Climate Change, Boris Kingma and Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt1 show that current comfort models intrinsically misrepresent female thermal demand, and consequently add bias to predictions of the energy consumption of office buildings. Current standards dictate the thermal indoor climate based on the prediction and evaluation of thermal comfort2, 3. These regulations specify comfort zones in which a large percentage of occupants with given personal parameters will regard the environment as acceptable. These standards rely on the predicted mean vote (PMV) model4, a method prescribed for evaluating whole-body thermal comfort, developed by Danish researcher P. Ole Fanger. The model's outcome parameter of comfort is the PMV, which is expressed on a seven-point scale of thermal sensation, ranging from cold (−3) to hot (+3). In the 1960s, Fanger4 carried out a series of experiments to investigate the effects of individual differences on thermal comfort levels. From these studies, Fanger concluded that the neutral temperature of a large group of people was independent of many parameters including gender, although it was found that women were more sensitive than men to fluctuations in the optimum temperature.
CATHY YEULET / HEMERA / THINKSTOCK
The metabolic rates of male and females mean they feel comfortable at different temperatures. Setting office temperatures according to standards that account for this difference could cut energy consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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- Schellen, L., Loomans, M. G., de Wit, M. H., Olesen, B. W. & van Marken Lichtenbelt, W. D. Physiol. Behav. 107, 252–261 (2012).
- Schellen, L., Loomans, M. G., de Wit, M. H. & van Marken Lichtenbelt, W. D. Build. Res. Inf. 41, 1–13 (2013).
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Affiliations
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Joost van Hoof is at the Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Dominee Theodor Fliednerstraat 2, 5631 BN Eindhoven, The Netherlands
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