Global Comfort
Comfort is strongly linked to the well-being of an individual “one feels good or does not feel good” in a given architectural or urban space.
Global comfort is due both to sensorial dimensions (temperature, humidity, light, odors, noise) and non-sensorial dimensions (depending on the individual’s cultural background; his or her acclimatization capacities; the type of activity e.g. outdoor sports activities vs. professional activity in the office; or psychological dimensions that can vary widely over time such as, for example, the feeling of security). These notions of comfort therefore vary from one person to another.
On the other hand, overall comfort is expressed as the “product” of various parameters of well-being:
Overall comfort = Thermal comfort x Acoustic comfort x Visual comfort x Olfactory comfort x Psychological comfort
Thus if one of the comforts is bad (unbearable such as, for example, too much noise, too much heat, too much glare or too many bad smells) then the overall comfort of the person concerned will be very poor; the building, the urban space, will be unliveable.
The designer must therefore analyze each parameter of comfort in order to make syntheses to guide the architectural and technical design.
Thanks to CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics), Novasim can simulate operative temperature, air velocity, relative humidity, odor dispersion and noise in order to identify potential sources of discomfort in a space and then to propose recommendations or mitigation measures to improve comfort.