INDOOR AIR QUALITY | AUTOMATED SYSTEMS Life enhancing Exposure to indoor particulate pollution can significantly affect health over a lifetime. Research by Dr Elizabeth Cooper and Dr Yan Wang suggests that the smart integration of automated windows and home air purifiers could improve average life expectancy by six months P eople in the UK, as in most of the Global North, spend about 65% of their time at home, where pollutant concentrations can be much higher than in outdoor air. A pollutant of particular concern is particulate matter less than 2.5m in diameter (PM2.5). Exposure to this contributes to many serious health issues, including lung cancer, stroke, heart disease, and asthma. PM2.5 is readily ltered with portable home air puriers (HAPs) equipped with high efciency particulate air (Hepa) lters. One potential way of improving air quality is by using smart building control systems to maintain a healthy indoor environment through automated windows and HAPs. Researchers at the University College London Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering carried out a study that assessed the impact on health of using automated systems. Occupants operation of windows exerts a substantial impact on indoor air quality and building energy consumption, but it also has the potential to conict with air ltration strategies in buildings. Bearing this in mind, the study aimed to develop a novel building control framework that optimises the operation of windows and portable HAPs to improved energy efciency and health. Building control systems play a central role in building operations and performance. The overall goals of such systems are to satisfy occupants comfort and minimise building energy consumption and carbon emissions. Building control systems, in general, share a common structure: sensor to controller to controlled device. The sensor measures an environmental parameter (for example, temperature and CO2 concentration) and sends collected data to the controller, which then processes the data with pre-programmed logic to determine the direction of change. Window-control systems have become a hot research topic in recent years, as has the study of HAPs. However, an integrated system, which controls both window operations and HAPs, has not been explored. P Methods The proposed control framework takes into account seasonality. For the nonheating period, the control framework has HAP and window controls running in parallel. In contrast, for the heating period, the window is set to be closed, while the mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) system operates continuously to provide background ventilation, with the HAP control enabled. Schematic diagrams of the logic for HAP and window controls can be found in Figures 1 and 2. The HAP is set to run when the indoor PM2.5 concentration reaches the dened HAP on threshold (15g/m3) and stops working once the concentration falls below the dened HAP off threshold (5g/m3). To maintain security, the window is set to be closed at midnight and when Health modelling was included to predict the potential scale of the impact of changes because of the framework 60 September 2022 www.cibsejournal.com CIBSE Sept 22 pp60-62 Smart air quality control Supp.indd 60 26/08/2022 15:47