Associate Professor Kwok Wai Tham from the National University of Singapore, gave a lecture with the title: “Sustainability Challenges for Healthy Indoor Environments: Future Outlook"
The importance of the human in the quest towards sustainability for indoor environments is argued from the premises of comfort, health and performance. The centricity of humans must dominate considerations in the design, technological innovation and operation of facilities. Acceptable comfort and health are baseline requirements that should not be compromised as this potentially leads to stress and infection that adversely impact on quality of living and working, perceived quality of the facility and its management. Allowing the indoor environment to dynamically and flexibly respond to humans enhances productivity and performance, with economic and social returns expected of high performance buildings.
Increasingly, Indoor environments are strongly influenced by sustainability considerations. However trends in population and urbanization, technology and product development, socio-economic demands on family lifestyle, building regulations, external environmental conditions and even Green building assessment schemes compose a strong backdrop that challenges the achievement of good indoor environmental quality.
This talk presents an overview of these trends and their implications, and suggests priorities to be adopted as suitable responses to assure that good IEQ may be effectively achieved.
Professor Tham has been awarded the Visiting Professorship from COWIfonden.