Classrooms

The main objective of any building is to reduce the adverse effects of the external environment on its users by providing a healthy, comfortable, and productive indoor climate. Indoor environmental performance is defined as Indoor Environmental Quality IEQ and relies upon exterior environmental parameters like exterior air quality, outer temperature, wind speed, humidity, noise, outer light levels, etc. In 2020, nine among the top ten dirtiest cities belonged to India, and thirty-five among the top fifty world’s most populated cities belonged to India. India ranks third, after Pakistan and Bangladesh, among 106 countries for the worst air quality.

United States Air Quality Index US AQI value of 141 for the year 2020 is unhealthy for sensitive groups like children, individuals suffering from respiratory ailments, and elderly individuals, as depicted in Figure 1. Besides, unhealthy air quality conditions AC Classroom not just in India but globally, the entire world is also struggling with issues related to climate change and the rise in temperature. The average temperature of Earth rose approximately 1.02 degrees Centigrade throughout the 20th century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC predicts a rise in temperature of 1.4 to 5.6 degrees centigrade within the next century.

Interestingly, as per a report by the National Program for the Prevention and Control of Deafness NPPCD, the World Health Organization WHO estimated that in India, around 63 million people 6.3% suffer from noise pollution and have severe hearing impairment. According to the 58th National Sample Survey NSS, 291 individuals per lakh of the population suffered from severe-to-profound hearing losses in India. Based on the national survey report, there was a huge proportion of children in the age group of 0–14 years in the affected group.

The survey showed that there could be a lot of other cases of milder severity and unilateral single-sided hearing losses. According to the 2011 Census, 425.9 persons per one lakh of population suffered from chronic hearing impairments. All these findings indicate the growing necessity of taking IEQ into account in Indian buildings..

Class rooms setting

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses PRISMA approach is employed as the review methodology in this review of studies. Information was retrieved from different databases on the basis of keywords, abstracts, and conclusions related to IEQ in Indian school classrooms and case studies. A limited number of review articles and some articles based on title and abstract were taken into account for final selection. Following thorough analyses of the thirty-seven articles that were included, all the concepts that were developed through the process of understanding current knowledge were correlated and put together to come up with a systematic review, followed by a thorough discussion, conclusion, and future directions.

school system

Pakistan comprises approximately 1.35 billion inhabitants in a geographical space of 3,287,263 km2 and is the seventh most populous nation globally out of 195 nations. As a multi-seasonal nation with an extensive east-to-west and north-to-south stretch, the temperature, the classroom colour full. The National Building classroom Code NBC 2016 categorized India into five climate zones, i.e., hot and dry, warm and humid, temperate, cold, and composite. The percentage area of Indian landfall under each climate zone is along with the classification criteria based on NBC 2016. The window-to-wall ratio and outer lux levels have also been tabulated according to the recommendations of the Energy

Energy children

Thermal comfort is an individual’s psychological condition, which indicates the degree of satisfaction with the thermal environment. TC is based on four environmental parameters: Relative Humidity, Mean Radiant Temperature, Dry Bulb Temperature, and air speed, and two personal parameters clothing rate and metabolic rate. There are two widely accepted models for the prediction of TC in any building, i.e., Predictive Mean Vote PMV and the Adaptive model for TC. PMV model is also referred to as the heat-balance model or the Laboratory-based model. Pool Ole Franger created the PMV model in the 1970s, and it is effective when used with Air-Conditioned buildings.

The International Organization for Standardization ISO ISO-7730 deems the PMV model as its thermal comfort model. The Adaptive model was developed by Richard De Dear and Gail S. Bragger in 1998, and the adaptive model takes into account the fact that the human body is adaptive and can change itself as per the environment around it to some extent. This Digital Classroom, Student Engagement, Multicultural Education, Inclusive Classroom, Global Perspectives, model can be easily applied with Naturally Ventilated NV buildings. A majority of Indian school buildings are naturally ventilated, and therefore the adaptive method is more preferable.

The air quality within and surrounding the building is referred to as the Indoor air quality. IAQ is based on the humidity, ventilation rate, temperature, various gases, biological impurities, and particulate matter presence. Physical, chemical, biological, and particulate matter along with dynamic interactions between parameters complicate the identification of IAQ-related issues by occupants. Outdoor pollution greatly influences the indoor air quality of naturally ventilated buildings. SBS is mostly linked with IAQ. Ventilation influences IAQ since it is the procedure of exchanging vitiated indoor air for fresh outside air and ensuring air movement within the space.

Indoor School Classrooms

Mostly, Indian school classrooms are Naturally Ventilated NV, and their thermal comfort is influenced by the exterior environment. In India, work on thermal comfort was pioneered by CSIR scientists M.R. Sharma and S. Ali of the Central Building Research Institute, Roorkee, during the 1980s. They introduced the Tropical Summer Index TSI to calculate thermal comfort in hot–dry and warm–humid environments. The TSI for other climates is in the process of being developed. The TSI °C is a function of the wet bulb temperature in °C, the globe temperature in °C, and the airspeed V in m/s, as shown in the Equation.

A thermal comfort model by linear regression that has been derived is also put forward in this work for an NV school classroom in a composite climate, meaning a unit change in neutrality for every change of 1.85 degrees centigrade in the current mean outdoor temperature Timeout as depicted in the Equation.

While conducting the systematic review, vital information from various Indian standards and private and public codes was gathered for a clear comprehension of the suitable levels of IEQ parameters. The suitable limits recommended for IEQ parameters and their sub-parameters are noted in Table 3 from various India-specific standards and codes.

Windows

Following a critical review of the literature available regarding IEQ parameters in  school Pakistan classrooms, only thirty-seven articles were found in the previous fifteen years. Twenty-nine articles were written following a real-time research study carried out on one or more IEQ parameters in an Indian school classroom. In addition, eight review articles regarding Indian school classrooms were taken into consideration for the development of this article.

Figure 10 shows a rise in research trend about six times in the school classroom IEQ, with regular studies over time. Shows the comparison of various IEQ Sustainable Learning, Leadership in Education, Future-Ready Education, Cultural Awareness, Global Citizenship, IGCSE Preparation, parameter studies with Indian climatic zones. Analysis concluded that IAQ in the Indian school classroom is the highest-researched parameter, occurring in seventeen studies. Accra follows with eight studies. In the same way, with six studies, TC is still in third place out of the four parameters. Visual comfort, with just two studies, is the most under-researched parameter over the last fifteen years in the Indian school classroom.

Conclusions

Studies on the IEQ parameters have been flourishing among Indian researchers in the recent decade. Still, very interestingly, the school buildings have a lot more to uncover when it comes to the indoor environment around them. IEQ requirements for good Indian school classrooms are the main issue today, which can be prioritized because of the pandemic conditions. Nonetheless, studies on this subject are insufficient and unevenly dispersed region-wise across India. Indian school classrooms are dismal and urgently in need of energy-efficient alterations with good IEQ for improved teaching and learning. The performance of students and teachers is another topic of research that directly relates to IEQ and the indoor comfort field.

The state of the art of chowk Azam IEQ conditions for schools suggests that there should be a standard technique used for credible studies and outcomes. COVID-19 is the breaking point in the direction of health and class. Studies in this field will have far-reaching consequences that assist in mitigating some of the communicable and respiratory conditions, as well as the country’s overall growth. The seed of IEQ research in chowk Azam is already well planted by scholars and academics. It is now up to stakeholders to ensure that the tree grows.