Indoor air quality: Five reasons for more transparency
The topic of indoor air quality is more topical than ever. Clever sensor technology and cloud technology can help to make air quality more transparent and thus achieve a whole range of positive effects.
Indoor air quality is important for a whole range of reasons: it affects employees' work efficiency and job satisfaction, the utilization of expensive office and conference rooms, the expansion of facility management control options for ventilation and air conditioning technology, and last but not least, the optimization of energy costs. Wherever people meet in enclosed spaces, the Air purity a sensitive topic. This applies first and foremost to workplaces, but also to other premises, for example in daycare centers, schools or universities.
Measure indoor air quality
The technology for room air measurement is now easy to install and operate, robust and efficient in operation, and last but not least, cost-effective. The sensors are simply attached to the relevant room using plug-and-play and connected to a dedicated cloud via a separate network (LORA-WAN) that is independent of the normal WLAN and a gateway. There, the values fed in are processed and can be called up and read at any time via an online dashboard. Essentially, the following five positive effects can be achieved from this.
1. increase of well-being and efficiency
People need adequate ambient air quality for concentrated learning and work. It has a measurable influence on their work performance. Poor indoor air quality causes fatigue, lack of concentration or even headaches. Sensor technology is used to measure the parameters that are decisive for this, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), temperature, humidity and volatile organic compounds (VOC) are recorded. This allows, for example, the simple measurement of CO2-The germ and aerosol content of the air can be deduced from the room air content and humidity. If required, other parameters such as fine dust, radon or carbon monoxide can also be measured by sensors.
2. anonymous occupancy measurement
By measuring these current values, exceedances of the limit values are reliably recorded and made transparent in real time. In addition, this makes it possible to measure the occupancy of a room, i.e. the number of people in it, anonymously and without the use of surveillance cameras. In this way, for example, current overcrowding or chronic exceeding or falling below occupancy limits can be reliably detected without having to record personal data.
3. current values as instructions for action
The measured values can be provided directly to those affected and serve as instructions for action. For this purpose, they are simply made visible directly in the room concerned by means of colored light, quasi as a traffic light signal. The values are also transmitted via device management over a separate network to a separate cloud. There they are processed, analyzed, compared and then made available via an online dashboard. In addition to those directly affected, other authorized persons, such as managers or air-conditioning technicians, also have access.
4. reduction of energy costs
The instructions for action based on current measurements enable much more targeted and efficient ventilation - resulting in higher energy efficiency and lower costs. Especially in times of drastically rising energy prices, this is an important aspect for companies. And by the way, the potential for disputes between "fresh air fanatics" and "heat lovers" that is latent in many offices is eliminated, since ventilation is now based on neutral values.
5. efficient facility management
For facility management, the air quality values are the basis for efficient control of heating, ventilation and air conditioning technology. These optimization options also ultimately serve to increase energy efficiency and reduce operating costs. Furthermore, even the link to alarm systems is possible, since the differential pressure between different rooms provides information about the air flow in the building, and thus deviating values can be detected.
Source: www.leanbi.ch. LeanBI, headquartered in Bern, is a Swiss specialist for data science applications that develops customized data analysis solutions based on artificial intelligence. The applications cover areas such as quality and process optimization, automated damage detection for infrastructures, and analysis of air quality and user behavior in rooms.
