School-based citizen-science action measuring IAQ comfort levels

Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) is an essential comfort domain in public spaces, especially educational ones. This growing interest is underlined in the post-COVID pandemic period, requiring the testing and diffusion of different solutions, from mechanically driven solutions to controlled natural ventilation ones. The latter may also be easily applied to existing buildings, requiring minimal interventions, including installing intelligent monitoring solutions that allow end-user alerting and support self-actuation actions. This paper investigates this issue, proposing a citizen-science methodology based on six steps developed during an H2020 IA project and involving six schools and 42 classes in a long measuring period. This work introduces the methodology and initial results. Results show improvements in the IAQ conditions after the students’ activation, with, in some cases, a slight decrease in the level of attention after a specific period. However, in 75% of the classes where a student lecture is given, IAQ improves in the short and the long run.