Benchmarking Healthy Building Requirements in Mitigating Airborne Transmission Diseases Such as COVID-19: Identifying the Gaps between Current Codes and Building Rating Tools
Publication: Construction Research Congress 2024
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic is evolving office building design and operation. Recent studies indicate that healthy building requirements, such as increased ventilation, higher air filtration, and temperature and humidity levels, could help mitigate the risk of airborne transmissions, such as COVID-19. As the risk of airborne diseases still exists, there is minimal information on the level current office building codes prevent or mitigate such risk. In response, this study aims to perform comparison of how building codes and rating tools recommend factors to mitigate airborne diseases. This study identified eight factors applicable to healthy buildings while mitigating the risk of airborne transmission allowing an effective comparison. The dataset included building codes for 15 states and cities and four rating tools, revealing several gaps in how codes and rating tools respond to airborne diseases. The study shows that, the benchmarked building codes lacked responsiveness to the risks of airborne diseases compared to building rating tools. The study results are expected to contribute to the effort of mitigating airborne transmission in office buildings, leading to healthier building design and operations in the future.
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Information
Published In
Construction Research Congress 2024
Pages: 769 - 779
History
Published online: Mar 18, 2024
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Building codes
- Building design
- Buildings
- Business management
- Commercial buildings
- Construction engineering
- Construction management
- Design (by type)
- Diseases
- Engineering fundamentals
- Facilities (by type)
- Health hazards
- Management methods
- Mitigation and remediation
- Practice and Profession
- Public administration
- Public health and safety
- Ratings
- Standards and codes
- Structural engineering
- Structures (by type)
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