Sandra Dedesko - What Does Climate Change Mean for Indoor Environmental Quality and Occupant Health
Channel: Sustainable Buildings Canada
Date: 30/06/2022

Climate change has brought more varied climatic conditions and extreme weather events that pose new challenges to the built environment. While growing attention is being put towards designing for enhanced resilience and physical durability, there has been less consideration of the impacts on indoor environmental quality. The average North American spends over 90% of their time indoors where they are exposed to numerous dynamic environmental conditions. Accordingly, time spent in buildings has a prominent impact on human health and wellbeing.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has garnered more widespread appreciation for this, there are additional climate change considerations beyond infectious disease control that must be considered to improve the health and wellbeing outcomes resulting from time spent in buildings in the years to come. .

These considerations will be explored by examining specific climate change-driven events and the resulting impacts on the indoor environment, including:

The influence of flooding on the indoor microbiome;
The impacts of wildfires on indoor air quality; and
The effects of heatwaves on indoor thermal conditions and occupant perceptions.

Each scenario will be presented to answer two main discussion questions:

What are the impacts on indoor environmental quality?
What does this mean for occupant health and wellbeing?

This session will provide an overview of indoor environmental quality and highlight design considerations of increasing importance in our ever-changing climate reality.