Abstract This paper investigates how poor-quality housing affects Vietnamese individuals’ health, measured using the number of sick days, which directly productivity and economic growth. Our analysis addresses endogeneity issues generally ignored in previous studies. We provide evidence, robust to various alterations that, absence an indoor water tap homeownership, harmful cooking fuel type, po...

BACKGROUND Up to 70% of atopic asthmatics have a positive skin test to the dust mite allergen Der p 1. Reduction of dust mite numbers by lowering room humidity control is one suggested technique for reducing dust mite allergen levels to clinically acceptable levels. Trials of this technique in temperate climates have reported mixed results. It has been speculated that one reason for this is tha...

Wheelchairs are primarily designed for mobility and are not necessarily intended for use as motor vehicle seats. However, many wheelchairs serve as vehicle seats for individuals unable to transfer to a vehicle seat. Subjecting wheelchairs to sled testing, in part establishes the crashworthiness of wheelchairs used as motor vehicle seats. Computer simulations provide a supplemental approach for ...

Modeling occupant behavior in smart buildings to reduce energy usage in a more accurate fashion has garnered much recent attention in the literature. Predicting occupant comfort in buildings is a related and challenging problem. In some smart buildings, such as NASA AMES Sustainability Base, there are discrepancies between occupants’ actual thermal discomfort and sensors based upon a weighted a...

Delta-V, the change in velocity of a vehicle, is a widely used predictor of occupant injury in vehicle collisions. In real world crashes, delta-V is commonly estimated from measurements of vehicle deformation using absorbed energy based methods. The accuracy of these estimates is highly dependent on the availability of deformation measurements for both vehicles involved in a crash. Specialized ...

An important requirement of household energy simulation models is their accuracy in estimating energy demand and its fluctuations. Occupant behavior has a major impact upon energy demand. However, Markov chains, the traditional approach to model occupant behavior, (1) has limitations in accurately capturing the coordinated behavior of occupants and (2) is prone to over-fitting. To address these...

Advanced naturally ventilated systems based on integration of basic natural ventilation strategies such as cross-ventilation and stack effect have been considered to be a key element of sustainable design. In this respect, there is a pressing need to explore the potential of such systems to achieve the recommended occupant comfort targets throughout their lifetime without relying on mechanical ...

In this paper, we present a room-level building occupancy estimation system (BOES) utilizing low-resolution vibration sensors that are sparsely distributed. Many ubiquitous computing and building maintenance systems require fine-grained occupancy knowledge to enable occupant centric services and optimize space and energy utilization. The sensing infrastructure support for current occupancy esti...

There are limited data on air quality parameters, including airborne particulate matter (PM) in residential green buildings, which are increasing in prevalence. Exposure to PM is associated with cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases, and since Americans spend almost 90% of their time indoors, residential exposures may substantially contribute to overall airborne PM exposure. Our objectives were...

Abstract—Buildings with shared spaces such as corporate office buildings, university dorms, etc. are occupied by multiple occupants who typically have different temperature preferences. Attaining a common temperature set-point that is agreeable to all users (occupants) in such a multi-occupant space is a challenging problem. Furthermore, the ideal temperature set-point should optimally trade of...