Tuesday 30 April 2024 | Thrive Future Buildings Forum: Energy and Indoor Air Quality

Please join us online to hear four exciting presentations and two panel discussions, all focussed on Thrive’s core research areas.

Date: Tuesday 30 April 2024

Time: 10:00am – 03:00pm AEST (Sydney time)

These presentations will be recorded and added to Thrive’s YouTube Channel, which you can access later here: https://www.youtube.com/@thriveiaq

FORUM AGENDA

• 10:00am: Introduction to the Forum – Lidia Morawska
• 10:15am: Presentation 1 – Sohail Hasnie
• 10:30am: Presentation 2 – Brock Manville
• 10:45am: Presentation 3 – Jason Monty and Geoff Hanmer
• 11:00am: Presentation 4 – Simon Witts
• 11:30am: Panel Discussion – Part 1
• 01:30pm: Panel Discussion – Part 2
• 3:00pm: Close of the Forum – Lidia Morawska

ZOOM Meeting ID: 886 1775 0422   |    Passcode: 995576

https://qut.zoom.us/j/88617750422?pwd=Ly9ma3VWV05NNTArYlhYaWU5OWtQQT09&from=addon

We expect buildings to be filled with clean, healthy air, free of pollutants of any kind, particularly infectious pathogens, and to keep us warm when it’s cold outside and cool when it’s hot, among many other requirements we have for buildings, our shelters. Energy is needed to meet this requirement. Energy not only costs money, but also involves emissions of pollutants, including greenhouse gases when fossil fuels are used to generate it and the use of resources of diverse nature (for example, rare metals for batteries), which poses a sustainability issue.

Currently, buildings consume about 30% of all the energy consumed by humans. Therefore, we must strive to achieve a balance between all these requirements to breathe clean air and have thermal comfort but consuming the least amount of energy possible and in a resource efficient manner. How to do it?

Panellists will discuss the following big questions:

• What is the optimal building design(s) to achieve balance in building performance with respect to indoor air quality and thermal comfort and the energy need to support this for specific climate(s)?
• What additional requirements for building energy will climate change pose with the increased frequency of episodic pollution event, particularly wildfires and their impact on indoor air quality? This will require additional efforts not only to protect people from exposure to outdoor pollutants penetrating indoors, but also to protect collections of sensitive objects.
• What R&D is still needed?
• Are all the necessary building engineering technologies available to equip buildings with this objective in mind?
• New types of materials? Better heat recovery systems? Better monitoring of building performance, indoor air quality and thermal characteristics?
• What is the role of the building occupants in this process? For example, there is currently a movement against overcooling of buildings: do building occupants or operators do it and why?
• What is the best way to power buildings, in a broader context of energy in the future (solar, wind, etc); and considering energy efficiency versus unlimited supply of clean energy?
• How to prepare humanity against a catastrophe such as a meteorite or massive volcanic eruptions that block the sun for years? 

This interdisciplinary forum is relevant to experts from many fields and to anyone involved with buildings, from academics to leaders tasked with maintaining a safe and resilient internal environment of schools, offices, art museums, and any space we share with others.