Published January 2022 | Version Submitted + Supplemental Material + Published
Journal Article Open

Room-level ventilation in schools and universities

  • 1. ROR icon Columbia University
  • 2. ROR icon University of California, Davis
  • 3. ROR icon University of Denver
  • 4. ROR icon Yale University
  • 5. ROR icon University of Colorado Boulder
  • 6. ROR icon Georgia Institute of Technology
  • 7. ROR icon Johns Hopkins University
  • 8. ROR icon University of California, Santa Barbara
  • 9. ROR icon California Institute of Technology

Abstract

Ventilation is of primary concern for maintaining healthy indoor air quality and reducing the spread of airborne infectious disease, including COVID-19. In addition to building-level guidelines, increased attention is being placed on room-level ventilation. However, for many universities and schools, ventilation data on a room-by-room basis are not available for classrooms and other key spaces. We present an overview of approaches for measuring ventilation along with their advantages and disadvantages. We also present data from recent case studies for a variety of institutions across the United States, with various building ages, types, locations, and climates, highlighting their commonalities and differences, and examples of the use of this data to support decision making.

Additional Information

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Received 10 August 2021, Revised 13 January 2022, Accepted 16 January 2022, Available online 26 January 2022. The authors thank Prof. Bill Nazaroff and Prof. Atila Novoselac for helpful discussions. VFM and DYM acknowledge Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Chemistry of Indoor Environments program for financial support, and Columbia Facilities. TMS and RAS gratefully acknowledge the Santa Barbara Unified School District and Goleta Union School District for their cooperation and help with measurements. ALS acknowledges Caltech and the Divisions of Geological & Planetary Sciences and Chemistry and Chemical Engineering for financial support, Caltech Facilities for testing and data collection, and Nathan Dalleska, John Crounse, and Paul Wennberg for contributions to method development and deployment. SW and NLN acknowledge support from Georgia Tech COVID-19 Rapid Response fund, and helpful discussions with Philip Johnston, Richard Chew, and Gregory Spiro from Georgia Tech Facilities. JAH acknowledges the University of Denver COVID-19 Response team, Department of Facilities Management, Lamont School of Music, and Planning, and Office of the Provost for funding and support. CK, RK, ML, and KJGP acknowledge the support of Julie Paquette, Anthony Kosior, and JP Fernandez with method development and deployment. PJO acknowledges support from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Open Philanthropy Project. Author contributions: VFM, JAH, DYM, NLN, KJGP, RS, AS, TS, and SW designed experiments, analyzed and interpreted data. JAH, DYM, NLN, KJGP, RS, AS, TS, and SW collected data. All authors participated in writing the manuscript and the development of Table 1. Declaration of competing interest: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Attached Files

Published - 1-s2.0-S2590162122000065-main.pdf

Submitted - room-level-ventilation-in-schools-and-universities.pdf

Supplemental Material - 1-s2.0-S2590162122000065-mmc1.pdf

Files

1-s2.0-S2590162122000065-main.pdf

Files (11.4 MB)

Name Size Download all
md5:f13734242255ef1812f9646470c1d3bb
9.7 MB Preview Download
md5:f6e782b4a53c6c825738ce4ea317573b
350.6 kB Preview Download
md5:42b14f14bcf2347f00e4d5ebd69183bc
1.4 MB Preview Download

Additional details

Identifiers

PMCID
PMC8789458
Eprint ID
110200
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20210811-170707088

Related works

Funding

Columbia University
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Caltech Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences
Caltech Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
Georgia Tech
University of Denver
Johns Hopkins University
Open Philanthropy

Dates

Created
2021-08-11
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2022-05-26
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
COVID-19, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)