Monitoring thermal comfort with IoT technologies: A pilot study in Chinese eldercare centers

Abstract

Thermal comfort is important for people’s life, especially for those living in eldercare centers. To study this topic, researchers have used survey and mathematical models to assess the thermal comfort of elders. More recently, some researchers started to explore using Building Information Modeling with data collected offline using sensors. With the wide adoption of IoT technologies, we propose to use an IoT system that could combine sensing data directly with the Building Information Modeling tools and monitor the thermal comfort for elders in eldercare centers in a real time manner. In addition to the objective measurements offered by IoT technologies, we also conducted site measurement and survey to collect background information of elderly residents including physiology, activity, age and cognitive perception and site information of eldercare centers including accessibility and number of elders. Harmonizing these information with the classic Predicted Mean Vote model enables us to conduct a pilot study in eldercare centers in Hefei, China.