WREC 1996

THERMAL COMFORT TEMPERATURES WORLD-WIDE - THE CURRENT POSITION

Revd M A Hnmphreys

Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture

Regent's Park College, Oxford, OXI 2LB, UK
and
School of Architecture
Oxford Brookes University
Gipsy Lane, Headington, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK

ABSTRACT

The development of the adaptive approach to thermal comfort is reviewed from 1970 to 1995. It is ar-
gued that the adaptive approach is likely to yield useful standards for thermal comfort world-wide.
These standards would take into account both climate and culture, and would need less energy than cur-
rent standards.

KEY WORDS

Thermal comfort; adaptive model; climate, field-studies; ISO-PMV.

INTRODUCTION

What has become known as the 'Adaptive' approach to thermal comfort rests on the simple observation
that people on the whole tend to react in ways which restore their thermal comfort. It recognises that a
dynamic equilibrium exists between people and their thermal environment, so that changes in the envi-
ronment tend to be compensated by changes in, for example, clothing or activity. Conversely, changes
in activity or clothing may be compensated by adjustments to the thermal environment. The chief re-
search method for investigating the adaptive responses is the field-study, in which people live and work
in their everyday environments, enjoying the freedoms which are typical of their normal circumstances,
and subject to constraints which may hinder their quest for comfort. The adaptive approach reeognises
that the design and construction of buildings, and even the study of thermal comfort itself, are among the
processes which people use to secure comfort. Indigenous and vernacular building designs and tradi-
tional modes of dress are of especial interest, since they often provide thermal comfort while using only
modest amounts of fuel.

A HISTORICAL NOTE

A short history of the development of the adaptive approach may help it to be seen in its context. C G
Webb is remembered chiefly for his thermal comfort work in Singapore (Webb 1959), but some years
after his return to England he started thermal comfort research at the UK Building Research Station. His
purpose was to construct, by using multiple regression analysis, an index of thermal comfort for office
workers. This index would combine into a single number the effects of air temperature, mean radiant
temperature, air movement and humidity. He proposed to obtain many subjective responses (comfort

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votes) from each of several people, as he had done in Singapore, for a period of several months, so that
any differences between the people could be evaluated. He retired soon atter starting the field-work,
leaving Fergus Nicoi and me to complete the project.

The search for a new index lea to nothing new, as the temperature of the globe thermometer proved to be
a sufficient indicator of the thermal environment, but the data were fascinating in another respect. With-
in each month's data the subjective impressions of warmth depended on the room temperature in the
usual manner, so that on the whole the people felt warmer if the room was warmer and vice-versa. But
although the room temperature went through a seasonal cycle, this seasonal variation was not reflected in
the comfort votes, whose average values remained much the same throughout the year (Humphreys and
Nicol 1970). This result could be explained if the people were adapting successfully to the seasonal drift
of room temperature from month to month, but not so successfully to its variation during a single work-
hag day, nor from day to day within a month. So we concluded that thermal comfort should be predicted
not from the room temperature itself, but from its departure from the monthly mean value. In other
words, thermal discomfort arises chiefly from a mismatch between the environments people expect and
the environments they encounter.

This consideration raised some questions:

What governs people's expectations of the temperature?
How quickly will they 'adapt' to changes in room temperature?
What are the limits to this adaptation?
What happens if adaptation is prevented or restricted?

We began to think of the sensation of warmth as part of a self-regulatory system in which the means of
regulation included both physiological and behavioural responses, and we formulated a model of thermal
comfort along these lines (Nicol and Humphreys 1973).

The evident importance of changes of clothing as a means of adaptation soon led me to develop the ob-
servation of clothing as a means of delineating thermal comfort conditions. The method was applied to
the comfort of secondary school children in summertime (Humphreys 1973), to people outdoors shop-
ping and at the zoo (Humphreys 1977) and to comfort during sleep (Humphreys 1979). Time series
analysis (using an exponentially weighted running mean as the mathematical model) showed that cloth-
ing might take up to a week to settle to an appropriate level following a change of temperature
(Humphreys 1979).

It seemed that it should be possible to use the adaptive insight to bring together into a single coherent
pattern thermal comfort results from different parts of the world. I was especially interested to see
whether they could show evidence of the power and scope of the adaptive mechanisms we had come to
believe were vital in securing comfort. There was convincing evidence. The indoor comfort tempera-
tures from populations in different countries were as low as 17°C (UK) and as high as 32°C (Iraq)
(Humphreys 1975). This difference was greater than could easily be explained by the differences in
clothing insulation, so I concluded that other mechanisms were also at work. Also, the mean of the in-
door temperature experienced by each of the various populations was generally quite close to its own
particular comfort temperature, showing that people's adaptations were generally quite successful.

At the independent suggestion of R K MacPherson and A Auliciems, I extended the analysis to explore
any effects of the climate. Comfort temperatures proved to be related to the mean monthly outdoor air
temperature, both for buildings which were consuming energy for heating and cooling, and for those that
were not. For the latter 'ffee-nmning' buildings, the relation seemed to be remarkably linear and strong.
The indoor comfort temperature rose by about half a degree for each degree rise in the mean outdoor
temperature (Humphreys 1978). The reason for this surprisingly precise relation is probably that the cli-
mate is a powerful influence on several aspects of living, such as clothing, pace of life, daily cycle of ac-
tivity, types of furnishing, and the design and construction of buildings. The analysis was extended to
explore further the relation between the mean indoor temperature and the comfort temperature
(Humphreys 1981).

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DEVELOPMENTS AND PROSPECTS

Seasonal and geographical variation of indoor comfortable temperatures

Andris Auliciems, who had conducted field-studies in both the UK and Australia, added further field
studies to the world-wide collection, while excluding some which were unsuitable for his purpose. From
this data-base he calculated the dependence of the comfort temperature indoors jointly on the mean out-
door temperature and the mean indoor temperature. He further suggested that the control of Australian
building temperatures should be according to a 'thermobile' rather than a 'thermostat', so that the tem-
peratures would vary in sympathy with the outdoor seasonal temperature, providing at the same time im-
proved comfort and better fuel economy (Auiiciems 1984).

These ideas are being pursued today in various countries. The climate of Pakistan has large regional di-
versity. Following a pilot study (Nicol et al 1994, 1995, Humphreys 1994), comfort temperatures are
being found for office workers from monthly field-studies in five different cities in Pakistan throughout
the year. This should enable an indigenous thermal comfort standard to be established which is suitable
for the climates, seasons and cultures of Pakistan. A similar project is being considered in Tunisia. The
Thermal Comfort Group at the School of Architecture at Oxford Brookes University, UK, hope to en-
courage many such projects, and are willing to offer advice in setting them up.

In the United Kingdom a project has been started at the Building Research Establishment in which it is
planned to control the indoor temperature in an office building according to an algorithm based on the
variation of the outdoor temperature throughout the year. It is to see whether such a control pattern is
liked by the occupants and whether it can save energy. The algorithm has been designed in a way that
makes its parameters simple to alter in response to experience in using it (Humphreys 1995). Prelimi-
nary computer modeling suggests that modest energy savings might be obtained.

The Thermal Comfort Group at Oxford Brookes University has started a two-year project (funded by the
EPSRC) to monitor the thermal comfort of occupants of buildings in Oxford and Aberdeen. It is hoped
to relate the subjective warmth of the occupants to their clothing, to the indoor climate, and to the se-
quence of outdoor temperature variation. Particular attention will be paid to the spring and autumn,
when the rate of change of outdoor temperatures is greatest. This project should help towards formulat-
ing an Adaptive temperature standard year-round.

ASHRAE have recently commissioned a project to collect field-study data world-wide, particularly from
those recent field studies where comprehensive measurements have been made. Such a data-base, if
sufficiently comprehensive, could be used as an 'expert system', so that by matching building type, cli-
mate, occupation and other relevant parameters, an appropriate match could be obtained which would
indicate an suitable thermal environment for a proposed new building. It is also hoped that analysis of
the new data will enable coherent climatic patterns to be perceived, so that an improved adaptive thermal
comfort standard can be formulated.

It will be interesting to see how the results of these varied projects fit into our existing knowledge of the
relation between comfort temperature and climate.

Individual control of the thermal environment

Comfort is more likely to be secured if an individual has control over his own thermal environment than
if it is controlled by someone else. There are two reasons for this: the problem caused by the conflicting
demands of different people can be avoided, and it is possible for the individual to adjust the environ-
ment according to his own fluctuating requirements. Individual control at the workplace may be pro-
vided by sophisticated modern environmentally controlled work-stations, or by the provision of simple
localised heating or cooling devices, In homes individual control has traditionally been achieved by
drawing nearer to a fire, or by moving further away from it. All these strategies use the adaptive prin-

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ciple, for they assume that people will secure their own comfort, or (which is not necessarily the same)
create the best thermal environment for their work. Standards which specify an optimum temperature,
air movement, or humidity would no longer he applicable. New standards would need to specify the ad-
justment potential of the controls, for range, speed and stability. Nick Baker, working at the Martin
Centre, Cambridge, has expressed these concepts in terms of 'adaptive opportunity'. An environment
with high adaptive opportunity is likely to prove more comfortable than one with low opportunity, be-
cause people will take advantage of the actual and potential variations in room temperature (Baker &
Standevan 1995).

It is likely that the judicious use of individual environmental controls will lead to fuel saving. In a build-
ing which needed to be heated, it would be possible for the background heat to be at the temperature
comfortable for those who preferred it cool, with local top-up heating to satisfy those who preferred it to
be warmer, so that in no case would more heating be provided than was needed. The reverse strategy
could be adopted in a building which needed to be cooled, so that in no case would more cooling be pro-
vided than was needed. The clothing insulation adopted by a group of people in an environment of this
kind has yet to be explored. Should it prove, as is not unlikely, that they would choose clothing in order
to be comfortable at the level of temperature of the background heat (or background cooling), further
economies would follow.

The adaptive mechanisms and current Standards

Comparison of predicted mean comfort vote (ISO 7730) with the actual mean comfort vote from recent
field studies reveals a systematic bias, whose magnitude depends on the mean indoor temperature
(Humphreys 1992, 1994). ISO-PMV is unbiased at around 27°C. Richard de Dear has shown from the
results of several new field-studies that PMV is satisfactory for estimating subjective warmth in
air-conditioned buildings, but not in naturally ventilated buildings, where the internal temperatures were
higher (DeDear 1994, 1995). This confirms that PMV over-predicts the subjective warmth of warm
environments. The conclusion is that ISO 7730 is not entirely suitable for general application. The use
of ISO-PMV could lead to unnecessary cooling in warm climates and unnecessary heating in cool ones,
and if applied in developing countries would lead to needless economic and environmental penalty.

It is unsatisfactory to have a discrepancy between the principal heat exchange model for thermal comfort
and the results of field-studies. Some current research is helping to explain the discrepancy:-

Nigel Oseland has recently compared the subjective warmth of the same group of people, in the same
clothing and conducting the same activity, at the office, at home, and in a climate chamber. He found
significant differences in the perceived warmth (Oseland 1994). Further studies are needed to verify this
conclusion, but if thermal comfort does prove to be context-dependent, then no heat exchange equation
can be entirely successful as a basis for thermal comfort standards.

Abdulshukor has compared the comfort temperatures of groups of Malaysians in climate chambers in
Malaya and in London UK. He found a significant difference, although the clothing and activity were
the same (Abdulshukor 1993). If acclimatisation proves aRer all to affect comfort temperature, ISO
7730 will need an appropriate adjustment.

II~ikhar Raja has developed a way of classifying posture according to its thermal effects. Preliminary
results confmn that posture is related to room temperature, and that the effect is large enough significant-
ly to affect body heat loss (Nicol and Raja 1995). It may follow that ISO-PMV will need to include an
improved allowance for posture.

The current ASHRAE thermal comfort standard also fails fully to meet current needs, because its allow-
ance for 'winte~ and 'summe? conditions is too rudimentary to describe the subtle differences among the
world's diverse climates. So for example in Pakistan the ASHRAE Standard would rule out environ-
ments which acclimatised people find perfectly acceptable (Nicol et ai 1994, 1995, Humphreys 1994).

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CONCLUSION

Many now believe that thermal comfort standards which make few demands on the world's energy re-
sources, and respect the cultures and climates of the world's different peoples, are most likely to come
from strategic field-study research projects, interpreted according to the adaptive concept. Field study
thermal comfort research, guided by the insights of the adaptive approach, is now at an interesting stage
of development. The prospects are good that this research will lead to thermal comfort standards which
are sympathetic to the climates and cultures of the world, and sustainable in the energy that they require.

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