Federico Tartarini

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Senior Research Associate at The University of Sydney

Introduction Burn survivors have an increased risk of heat-related illnesses and experience a heightened perceptual strain during physical activity. This is due to severely impaired body temperature regulation secondary to the absence of sweating from grafted skin. Both responses will dissuade well-healed burn survivors from receiving the cardiovas...

Purpose Burn survivors have an increased risk for heat related illnesses, and a heightened perceptual strain during exercise (thereby impeding physical activity), both due to impaired body temperature regulation. We developed and validated a freely deployed online model that burn survivors can use to estimate their heat risk during physical activit...

This study aims to verify participants' thermal comfort and self-reported productivity when working from their home or office in Singapore (hot season) and Tokyo, Japan (cold season). Through a longitudinal field study, over the period from January to April 2023, twenty-four participants completed surveys daily. We monitored the indoor environment...

Climate-responsive building design holds immense potential for enhancing comfort, energy efficiency, and environmental sustainability. However, many social, cultural, and economic obstacles might prevent the wide adoption of designing climate-adapted buildings. One of these obstacles can be removed by enabling practitioners to easily access, visual...

Collecting feedback from people in indoor and outdoor environments is traditionally challenging and complex to achieve in a reliable, longitudinal, and non-intrusive way. This paper introduces Cozie Apple, an open-source mobile and smartwatch application for iOS devices. This platform allows people to complete a watch-based micro-survey and provide...

The Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) model developed by Fanger predicts thermal sensation. It is used in the ISO-7730, while the ASHRAE-55 uses a modified version (PMVCE) to better account for cooling provided by air movement. We compared the PMV and PMVCE results against 64,825 thermal sensation votes collected in buildings. We found that for V > 0.1 m/s...

Elevated air movement produced by fans can offset air-conditioning energy requirements by allowing temperature setpoints to be raised without compromising thermal comfort. These advantages are even greater in hot and humid climates that inherently have large and sustained indoor cooling requirements. Few studies have assessed the in-situ benefits o...

Elevated air movement produced by fans can offset air-conditioning energy requirements by allowing temperature setpoints to be raised without compromising thermal comfort. These advantages are even greater in hot and humid climates that inherently have large and sustained indoor cooling requirements. Few studies have assessed the in-situ benefits o...

Buildings that are designed specifically to respond to the local climate can be more comfortable, energy-efficient, and with a lower environmental impact. However, there are many social, cultural, and economic obstacles that might prevent the wide adoption of designing climate-adapted buildings. One of the said obstacles can be removed by enabling...

Personal thermal comfort models are a paradigm shift in predicting how building occupants perceive their thermal environment. Previous work has critical limitations related to the length of the data collected and the diversity of spaces. This paper outlines a longitudinal field study comprising 20 participants who answered Right‐Here‐Right‐Now surv...

People spend the majority of their time indoors and environmental conditions affect their perceptions, performance, health, and well-being. Buildings should, therefore, be designed and operated with the main objective of providing comfortable environments for occupants and meeting their needs. However, in practice, occupants' perceptions and sensat...

Cohort Comfort Models (CCM) are introduced as a technique for creating a personalized thermal prediction for a new building occupant without the need to collect large amounts of individual comfort-related data. This approach leverages historical data collected from a sample population, who have some underlying preference similarity to the new occup...

We introduce Cohort Comfort Models, a new framework for predicting how new occupants would perceive their thermal environment. Cohort Comfort Models leverage historical data collected from a sample population, who have some underlying preference similarity, to predict thermal preference responses of new occupants. Our framework is capable of exploi...

This paper describes the adaptation of an open-source ecological momentary assessment smart-watch platform with three sets of micro-survey wellness-related questions focused on i) infectious disease (COVID-19) risk perception, ii) privacy and distraction in an office context, and iii) triggers of various movement-related behaviors in buildings. Thi...

Thermal comfort affects the well-being, productivity, and overall satisfaction of building occupants. However, due to economical and practical limitations, the number of longitudinal studies that have been conducted is limited, and only a few of these studies have shared their data publicly. Longitudinal datasets collected indoors are a valuable re...

Heatwaves are one of the most dangerous natural hazards causing more than 166,000 deaths from 1998–2017. Their frequency is increasing, and they are becoming more intense. Electric fans are an efficient, and sustainable solution to cool people. They are, for most applications, the cheapest cooling technology available. However, many national and in...

Issues of fuel poverty and thermal discomfort have been identified in social housing internationally, and have been linked with possible health risks for tenants. Statistically, many of the known factors linking poor thermal performance of a dwelling and increased health risk are over-represented in Australian social housing compared with the gener...

Periodic disinfection of workspaces can reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission. In many buildings periodic disinfection is performed manually; this has several disadvantages: it is expensive, limited in the number of times it can be done over a day, and poses an increased risk to the workers performing the task. To solve these problems, we developed an aut...

There is limited scientific evidence on what is the optimal sampling period to measure skin temperature in longitudinal thermal comfort studies, and how this sampling period selection affects the results. iButtons® are among the most widely used wireless sensors in field and lab studies to measure skin temperature, since they are accurate, reliable...

There is limited scientific evidence on what is the optimal sampling period to measure skin temperature in longitudinal thermal comfort studies, and how this sampling period selection affects the results. iButtons® are among the most widely used wireless sensors in field and lab studies to measure skin temperature, since they are accurate, reliable...

On the 7th of April, the Singaporean government enforced strict lockdown measures with the aim of reducing the transmission chain of the coronavirus disease 2019. This had a significant impact on the movement of people within the country. Our study aims to quantify the impact that these measures had on outdoor air pollution levels. We obtained air...

The Center for the Built Environment (CBE) Thermal Comfort Tool is a free online tool for thermal comfort calculations and visualizations that complies with the ASHRAE 55–2017, ISO 7730:2005 and EN 16798–1:2019 Standards. It incorporates the major thermal comfort models, including the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV), Standard Effective Temperature (SET),...

We developed pythermalcomfort, a Python package that allows users to calculate the most common thermal comfort indices in compliance with the main thermal comfort standards. For example, pythermalcomfort can be used to calculate: whole body thermal comfort indices (e.g., Predicted Mean Vote, adaptive models, Standard Equivalent Temperature), local...

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...

Thermal comfort research has been traditionally based on cross-sectional studies and spatial aggregation of individual surveys at building level. This research design is susceptible to compositional effects and may lead to error in identifying predictors to thermal comfort indices, in particular in relation to adaptive mechanisms. A relationship be...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

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...

The demand for space cooling is the fastest growing end-use of electricity in buildings since many rely on the use of air-conditioners only to control the indoor climate. Ventilative cooling is a passive cooling technique, which involves the use of outdoor air to lower buildings' indoor air temperature. In order to determine whether ventilative coo...

Between 2017 and 2018, we conducted a longitudinal field experiment in a mixed-mode ventilation building located in Wollongong Australia, with a particular focus on occupant thermal comfort and adaptive behaviour. This study investigated how different building operation modes i.e. air-conditioning (AC) and natural ventilation (NV), can have an impa...

Ventilative Cooling is a promising technique to improve the energy efficiency of buildings through reduced need for mechanical cooling to maintain thermal comfort. To assess the feasibility of Ventilative Cooling in a specific location, it is useful for designers to be able to evaluate the climate potential for cooling. This paper describes a new a...

Mixed-mode (MM) ventilation approaches are becoming increasingly popular as a more energy efficient alternative to conventional HVAC solutions. By integrating both natural ventilation and mechanical cooling strategies, mixed-mode (or hybrid) building operation is able to achieve comfortable indoor environments whilst minimising reliance on energy i...

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...

The primary aim of this research was to assess the quality of the thermal environment of six Australian nursing homes, and to understand and quantify the impacts of the indoor thermal environment on the perceptions and comfort of staff, residents and other occupants. The impact of the thermal environment on perceptions and comfort of building occup...

While the rapid increase in the fraction of people aged over 65 is driving a substantial increase in the number of people living in nursing homes, there has been very limited previous research carried out on how residents of nursing homes perceive their thermal environment and there is a lack of thermal comfort guidelines for the aged care sector....

A demographic shift is underway in Australia; the number of people aged 65 and over is rapidly increasing. Regulations have been implemented to enhance the quality of care being provided in nursing homes; however, in the aged care sector there is little by way of guidance addressing design and performance issues in regards to Indoor Environmental Q...

This study aimed to determine the specific correlation between indoor air temperature and agitation of nursing home residents with dementia. Agitated behaviors of 21 residents, living in 1 nursing home, were assessed for a 10-month period using the Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Inventory (CMAI). The CMAI Total Frequency scores were found to increase si...