Despoina Teli

Despoina Teli
Chalmers University of Technology · Faculty of Engineering and the Environment

Architect Dipl.-Ing., PhD | Associate professor

About

55
Publications
32,468
Reads
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1,602
Citations
Introduction
Despoina Teli is associate professor at the Division of Building Services Engineering at Chalmers University. She is also guest researcher at the Faculty of Engineering and the Environment at the University of Southampton. Despoina does research in thermal comfort, indoor climate and energy performance of buildings.
Additional affiliations
May 2019 - present
University of Southampton
Position
  • Researcher
March 2018 - present
Chalmers University of Technology
Position
  • Professor (Associate)
March 2015 - present
Chalmers University of Technology
Position
  • Vinnmer Marie Curie Research Fellow
Education
September 2009 - December 2013
October 2005
September 1998

Publications

Publications (55)
Article
Full-text available
The aim of the article is to analyze the perceived thermal comfort and indoor air quality of occupants and establish associations between these responses and the building-related, occupant-related characteristics, and environmental parameters of residential buildings (a total of 38 variables). The analysis is focused on the Swedish building stock a...
Article
Full-text available
The objective of this study is to contribute to the discussion on the impact of dwelling satisfaction aspects (size, standard, layout, appearance/aesthetics, well-being, cost and area/neighbourhood) and perceived indoor environmental quality (thermal comfort, air quality, satisfaction with daylight and acoustic comfort) on occupants’ overall satisf...
Article
Full-text available
Energy performance certificates are valuable sources of information about buildings. They are primarily used to assess the buildings’ energy performance, however the data included can also be used for building stock description or analysis from different perspectives. School buildings account for a substantial part of the Swedish public building st...
Article
Full-text available
Building energy analyses of large samples or building stocks commonly use National building stock temperature averages in their calculations. However, such averages may not be representative of the conditions in a specific building type and may mask meaningful information found at building or dwelling level. Analysis of indoor temperature data from...
Article
This study explored the relationship between children's subjective perception of indoor environmental quality in classrooms, measured thermal and air quality factors, and the type of ventilation. Environmental data were collected in 45 classrooms in 23 primary schools in Sweden during the heating season. Schools with three types of ventilation were...
Book
Full-text available
Guidelines for low energy building design based on the adaptive thermal comfort concept - Technical report: IEA EBC Annex 69: Strategy and Practice of Adaptive Thermal Comfort in Low Energy Buildings. The adaptive thermal comfort concept has been developed over many years and proven in numerous field studies (e.g. Webb 1964, Nicol and Humphreys 1...
Article
The present study aimed at investigating the effects of ventilation strategies on indoor air quality (IAQ) in schools. Measurements of thermal environment and IAQ were performed over 5 school days in 45 primary school classrooms in Gothenburg, Sweden, grouped into three categories according to their ventilation system: category A) natural or exhaus...
Article
Full-text available
Assessment of indoor environmental quality has recently moved to a combined methodology of both measurements and questionnaire surveys. In this study, we have used data from the national survey of the Swedish housing stock, BETSI, conducted in 2007/2008, during the heating season. The study included, among others, measurement of selected indoor air...
Article
Residential indoor climate is a key factor for occupant comfort, health and wellbeing, while also affecting the buildings' energy demand. A strong focus has been traditionally placed on low winter indoor temperatures in dwellings due to their considerable health impacts. However, there is a trend towards high and stable indoor temperatures, which a...
Article
Data from a nationwide survey on the status of the Swedish residential building stock and indoor air quality was placed in the public domain by the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning of Sweden. The current research investigates the indoor humidity conditions in Swedish residential buildings, single-family houses and apartments, assess...
Article
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Buildings’ expected (projected, simulated) energy use frequently does not match actual observations. This is commonly referred to as the energy performance gap. As such, many factors can contribute to the disagreement between expectations and observations. These include, for instance, uncertainty about buildings’ geometry, construction, systems, an...
Article
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Over the last decades, strong focus has been placed on the energy efficiency of buildings; not least school buildings. Energy performance (EP) of buildings is nowadays in principle described by one single indicator based on purchased energy in kWh/year.m ² . Another important building performance aspect is the indoor environmental quality. This stu...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Research indicates that school children have lower comfort levels than adults and this exacerbates the challenge of tackling the risks of summer overheating in schools without resorting to air conditioning. UN SDG 13 calls for climate action to strengthen the resilience of our cities and reduce the impact of climate change. In this work, a modern,...
Article
Full-text available
Technological progress in conditioning practice combined with prevailing thermal comfort criteria, created stable, tightly controlled indoor temperature bands. Research shows indoor temperatures to be increasing in the heating period, leading to higher building energy use than planned. Field studies provide proof that occupants not in control of th...
Conference Paper
Traditional building design education in the disciplines of building services, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, etc. focusses on quantifiable factors, i.e. factors which can be subject of calculation, simulation and dimensioning. Since non-quantifiable factors are not part of calculation or simulation models, there is a tendency that they...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Adaptive thermal comfort guidelines have been developed within the work of Annex 69: "Strategy and practice of adaptive thermal comfort in low energy buildings". The guidelines have been established based on a framework for adopting adaptive thermal comfort principles in building design and operation developed by the authors. The guidelines target...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Occupants' thermal response is influenced by their sensitivity to temperature variations, i.e. the rate of change in occupants' thermal sensation per unit change in indoor temperature. Thermal sensitivity is commonly taken as constant (Griffiths constant) in the calculation of occupants' comfort temperature. This constant is based on small differen...
Article
Full-text available
People's subjective response to any thermal environment is commonly investigated by using rating scales describing the degree of thermal sensation, comfort, and acceptability. Subsequent analyses of results collected in this way rely on the assumption that specific distances between verbal anchors placed on the scale exist and that relationships be...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
p>Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) is a process that can reveal the interrelations between key building performance factors and successfully integrate indoor environmental quality, thermal comfort, functionality, environmental strategy and occupants' satisfaction. POE has become a prerequisite for several building certification systems and it is oft...
Article
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Thermal discomfort is one of the main triggers for occupants’ interactions with components of the built environment such as adjustments of thermostats and/or opening windows and strongly related to the energy use in buildings. Understanding causes for thermal (dis-)comfort is crucial for design and operation of any type of building. The assessment...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
One of the major challenges of building industry today is to provide indoor spaces allowing the occupants to make themselves comfortable while achieving low energy consumption. Considering the observed increasing temperatures and a more extreme climate, this becomes even more urgent and difficult to accomplish. It is therefore necessary to rely on...
Chapter
There has been a lot of research over recent years on children’s thermal comfort, which highlighted the different needs of young children compared to adults. These findings pose a challenge to designers on how to best meet these needs. This paper focuses on recommended temperature zones and assumptions used in standards through a case study in a gr...
Chapter
Everyday thermal environments affect people’s comfort and wellbeing, with extreme conditions affecting human health. A strong focus on avoiding the extremes along with the introduction of tight thermal comfort criteria over the years has led to design strategies and behaviors that promote thermally stable indoor environments. However, recent resear...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The aim of this study was to compare the indoor air quality in newly built energy-efficient (passive) buildings in Sweden with the Swedish residential housing stock and new conventional buildings. We have used data from our previous publications to calculate Indoor Environmental Index (IEI), which is an average of Indoor Discomfort Index (IDI) that...
Article
Full-text available
1. Introduction Cities have been described as transaction machines enabling human interaction (Stonor, 2011) with city centre retail spaces an integral part of the socio-economic fabric, acting as a centre of creativity allowing local communities to pass, relate and transact (Granger, 2010; Griffiths, 2015). Research has proven that city centre via...
Article
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Recognizing the value of open-source research databases in advancing the art and science of HVAC, in 2014 the ASHRAE Global Thermal Comfort Database II project was launched under the leadership of University of California at Berkeley's Center for the Built Environment and The University of Sydney's Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) Laboratory. The...
Article
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Numerous field studies conducted in different locations have found that peoples’ thermal comfort varies with local climate. However, little is understood about the effect of moving from one climate to another. Literature suggests that people would be able to adapt to the typical indoor climate in a new location, though estimated timescales for this...
Article
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The UK aims to reduce its carbon emissions focusing on the renovation of its existing building stock, particularly on the residential sector. Within this group, social housing is an excellent candidate for retrofits, but faces specific challenges. The cases presented in this study are social housing tower blocks in the City of Portsmouth, which are...
Article
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This paper investigates the thermal performance offour school buildings of different ages and characteristics, using current EU overheating criteria and ‘adjusted’ criteria based on children's lower comfort temperature found in recent research. Data collected in Southampton, UK, between 2011-2015 are used in the analysis, which consists of two part...
Article
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Material and component performances are blunt instruments for appraising the thermal performance of structures. A certain amount of consumed energy is attributable to the interaction of building fabric components, where thermal bridges occur. This paper analyses the thermal bridging effect and provides a number of modelled, cost-effective retrofit...
Conference Paper
In temperate climates, one passive design solution is to increase the heat capacity of building fabric. This design principle aims to reduce heating demand in winter and over-heating in summer; it is also coupled with more stable indoor air and radiant temperature. This may suggest that by exposing thermal mass, occupants may feel more comfortable....
Conference Paper
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This paper presents results from a pilot thermal comfort study in five Swedish grade school classrooms in three different buildings during winter 2015/16. The study includes measurements of environmental parameters (air temperature, globe temperature, relative humidity, air speed, CO 2) and questionnaire surveys designed to match the children's cog...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Reducing energy demand in dwellings is an important component of meeting carbon reduction targets. The drivers of this demand are linked to occupant practices, varying greatly between people and locations. Heating, as the main component of energy demand in dwellings in the UK, is often associated with thermal comfort, defined in ASHRAE 55 as the 'c...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Numerous field studies conducted in different locations have demonstrated that comfort conditions vary due to adaptation to the local climate. This study aims to investigate how preferences for the indoor environment change when the climate context changes and how thermal history influences comfort conditions in a new thermal environment. A new hal...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This work explores the hypothesis that exposure to high indoor temperatures during winter can change thermal expectations of the occupants, challenging the standard boundaries of thermal comfort and leading to excess in energy demand for heating. The analysis presented here is based on two case study social housing tower buildings where indoor temp...
Article
Adaptive comfort theory states that over time people adapt to their normal environment. Therefore, people from different climates are expected to have different thermal preferences and behaviours, which could lead to ‘performance gap’ in buildings with occupants of diverse climate backgrounds. This study investigates the influence of occupants’ the...
Article
Full-text available
Social housing retrofit is often seen as a way to contribute to carbon reductions as it typically encompasses large-scale interventions managed by one landlord. This work investigates the carbon savings potential of a deep retrofit in a local authority owned 107-flat tower block, taking into account the tenants' pre-retrofit heating strategies. Pri...
Article
Thermal comfort surveys in school classrooms suggest that children have different thermal preferences to adults. This implies a need to revisit the current adult-based thermal comfort models. This paper investigates the principal adaptive comfort relationships that form the basis of adaptive comfort theory, using 2693 pupil thermal sensation respon...
Article
Recent thermal comfort research in a light-weight junior school building showed that children were more sensitive to higher temperatures than adults and subsequently that current thermal comfort standards were not appropriate for the assessment of their thermal environment. This paper presents a comparison of these survey results to those from a su...
Article
This paper compares the values used for the Griffiths constant (G=0.5) and the running mean constant (?=0.8) in adaptive comfort algorithms with the values calculated from thermal comfort field surveys in two naturally ventilated junior schools in Southampton, UK. The surveys were conducted outside the heating season in 2011 and 2012 respectively,...
Article
Full-text available
This paper investigates the impact of current user behaviour on the carbon savings from retrofit measures including Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (MVHR) in a council owned 107-flat tower block. Prior to the retrofit, temperature and relative humidity monitoring was undertaken in 18 flats for 35 days. The measurements were then used to d...
Article
An investigation is presented of children's thermal sensation trends and their perception of overall comfort and tiredness in school classrooms. Findings are reported from a field survey in a naturally ventilated primary school in Southampton, UK, which included thermal comfort surveys and simultaneous measurements of indoor environmental variables...
Article
Current thermal comfort models are based on studies with adult subjects, mainly in offices. There is no assurance however that these models apply to children. This paper presents findings from thermal comfort surveys and measurements of indoor environmental variables in naturally ventilated classrooms in Hampshire, England. School children aged 7–1...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper presents findings from a field survey in a naturally ventilated primary school building in Southampton, UK. The study included thermal comfort surveys and simultaneous measurements of indoor environmental variables. Approximately 230 pupils aged 7-11 in all 8 classrooms of the school were surveyed in repeated survey runs outside the heat...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper presents a pilot study which considers the overheating risk of classrooms in school buildings. Four schools in Southampton in the South of the UK, constructed during the period of the 1950s- 1980s were used as case study examples. The schools were studied in terms of the parameters or the combination of parameters that may drive classroo...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The paper refers to the role of the bioclimatic principles on the planning and design of urban open spaces in order to improve the microclimate and the comfort conditions. Its goal is to illustrate the importance of implementing bioclimatic design in public open spaces, which can lead to more sustainable cities. The redesign of an open space in a r...

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