Ph.D. courses

Collaborations in Ph.D. courses

BAEDA Lab offers its transversal background collaborating in the teaching activities of different Ph.D. courses at Politecnico di Torino

Course description: Existing building stocks are composed, for the most part, of buildings with poor energy performance. They represent a high potential for energy and environmental savings, that can be effectively achieved through deep knowledge and proper modelling of the energy performance. The course is aimed at presenting methods and procedures for the energy and environmental assessment of building stocks and to estimate the effect of refurbishment measures. Different energy performance modelling techniques are concerned, including engineering (e.g. building physics based methods using reference buildings) and data driven (e.g. inverse modelling and data mining based techniques) approaches. Examples of the presented techniques will be provided as well as the results of their application in real building stocks. A specific focus will be addressed to the definition of the European residential building typologies developed in the IEE-TABULA research project.

Expected Learning Outcomes: The course is aimed at providing knowledge on
- Techniques for the building stock modelling – engineering models, inverse models (empirical methods and unsupervised and supervised data mining techniques)
- Cluster analysis procedures to identify specific subsets of the building stock
- Definition of building typologies and reference buildings: real example buildings, archetypes
- Simulation tools for the energy and environmental assessment of building stocks
- Examples of energy balance of building stocks

Course description: Energy consumption of buildings significantly depends on indoor environment requirements, building design and operation and systems. Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) includes thermal, indoor air, light and acoustics aspects of the indoor environment. IEQ affects health and productivity of the occupants and hence its evaluation is crucial for the occupant’s behaviour in relation to building spaces and systems (e.g., use and control of windows, shadings, HVAC, lighting, etc.). Recent studies have also demonstrated that costs of the deteriorated indoor environment for the society, employer and building owner are significant. At the same time, latterly the COVID-19 pandemic has driven a complete rethinking of strategies for the management of indoor air quality, indoor environmental quality and also the ergonomics of indoor environments. A correct assessment of building energy performance has to properly take into account IEQ aspects; to this purpose, several international standards and guidelines have been introduced with the aim to provide criteria for thermal comfort, air quality, acoustic and visual comfort. This course provides design criteria for IEQ of different types of buildings, methodologies for performing in-field measurements and subjective surveys. Eventually the course is aimed at discussing the most important factors related to IEQ influencing the building energy performance at both the design and operational stages.

Expected Learning Outcomes: The course is aimed at providing knowledge on
- Indoor environment quality and energy efficiency in buildings
- Criteria for the design of building systems and energy calculation
- Long-term evaluation of the indoor environment
- Existing buildings and post occupancy evaluation
- Classification and certification of the indoor environment
- Criteria for mechanical heated and/or cooled buildings
- Local thermal discomfort
- Criteria for buildings without mechanical cooling
- Principles of adaptive comfort models
- The impact of COVID-19 on IAQ control strategies
- IEQ and ergonomics
- Electric lighting and daylighting
- Visual and non visual aspects of light
- Criteria for comfortable and healthful lighting in non residential buildings
- Acoustic requirements and design guidelines to ensure good acoustic quality
- primarily of spoken communication, in small to-medium sized rooms