Studying the Indoor Environment and Comfort of a University Laboratory: Air-Conditioning Operation and Natural Ventilation Used as a Countermeasure against COVID-19

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper investigated the indoor environment and thermal comfort with the operation of air conditioning and natural ventilation. However, the study does not necessarily to relate to COVID-19, so please consider adjusting the title or explain more in the manuscript of the importance of the current study to mitigate COVID transmission. Some more detailed questions are listed below.

1. The introduction part should be enhanced. It should not just explain the background and objective of the current study, but also include necessary connections to related study and let the readers learn their methods and major conclusions.

2. Section 2. Apart from the on-site measurement, the study also adopted the Microsoft API to evaluate the facial expression. Please explain the background and algorithm of this tool and explain how it benefits the current study. Provide some example of how different facial expressions people may have when the thermal and air quality environment is different.

3. Please explain if the facial expression detection explains the data and how it compares with the questionnaire results.

4. I believe the airborne infection is the infection routes most related to the current study. So there is no need to discuss hand washing, droplets and contact infection routes. Otherwise, it is very distracted.

5. Please highlight the most generable conclusions and most useful information from this study. Probably in a few lines with bullets.

6. The conclusion of the paper is mostly known information.

7. Add discussion of limitation of the study.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Title: Studying the indoor environment and comfort of a university laboratory: Air-conditioning operation and natural ventilation used as a countermeasure against COVID-19

We resubmit the revised manuscript entitled “Studying the indoor environment and comfort of a university laboratory: Air-conditioning operation and natural ventilation used as a countermeasure against COVID-19” for publication as Buildings.

First of all, I would like to thank the reviewers.

Many comments and questions from reviewers improve the academic quality of this manuscript, and furthermore, it is accepted as a lot of advice for authors. thank you.

To summarize the reviewer's content, it was to write the introduction more clearly and to express the scope of the study in an easy-to-understand manner. And, it was a clear expression of what I wanted to say in this study. Some reviewers pointed out that the limitations of this study should be further explained. Therefore, we revised this manuscript according to the reviewers' comments, and deleted some parts.

Please check. Red text in the manuscript is the revised part.

Finally, this manuscript was proofread by an English expert.

 

We have revised the manuscript according to the reviewers' comments as much as possible, but please check this revised manuscript once again.

We appreciate your hard work.

 

Sincerely

Hyuntae Kim

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

1. What types of equipment were used for all the measurements? What were their accurancy?

2. The quality of Figure 1 is really bad, can you provide better quality picture?

3. ”The ventilation fan installed in  the laboratory was operated for 24 hours. ” row 132". Does this refere to the air conditioning unit? Please clarify this in the article.

4. Figure 12 shows the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) values during the summer and winter. The PMV value was calculated using temperature, relative humidity, radiation temperature, and wind speed measured indoors. There is no information on which equipments have been used or any kind of accurancy of these devices, please provide this information in the method part of the article.

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Title: Studying the indoor environment and comfort of a university laboratory: Air-conditioning operation and natural ventilation used as a countermeasure against COVID-19

We resubmit the revised manuscript entitled “Studying the indoor environment and comfort of a university laboratory: Air-conditioning operation and natural ventilation used as a countermeasure against COVID-19” for publication as Buildings.

First of all, I would like to thank the reviewers.

Many comments and questions from reviewers improve the academic quality of this manuscript, and furthermore, it is accepted as a lot of advice for authors. thank you.

To summarize the reviewer's content, it was to write the introduction more clearly and to express the scope of the study in an easy-to-understand manner. And, it was a clear expression of what I wanted to say in this study. Some reviewers pointed out that the limitations of this study should be further explained. Therefore, we revised this manuscript according to the reviewers' comments, and deleted some parts.

Please check. Red text in the manuscript is the revised part.

Finally, this manuscript was proofread by an English expert.

We have revised the manuscript according to the reviewers' comments as much as possible, but please check this revised manuscript once again.

We appreciate your hard work.

 

Sincerely

Hyuntae Kim

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

I have studied this article which deals with the problems posed by ventilation to avoid COVID in university laboratories in Japan.

The authors discuss an interesting matter for Health preservation and comfort. The approach is systematic and adequate. However, there are some drawbacks. The first problem in my opinion is that the experiments are very limited in time and space. Using only one particular classroom at their own university for two days in summer and two days in winter. The experiments must be extended greatly if we are looking for relevant results that could be applied in a majority of cases.

Second problem is lack of architectural definition of the room studied and the geometry of its features, some three-dimensional analyses are missing and also to define if this is a standard type of classroom that could be valid for other locations inside or outside Japan.

That said, although the monitoring procedures are correct, some simulations are missing and perhaps a little of CFD analysis to find the specifics of internal design of the laboratories in order to prevent the spread of aerosols and colloids containing viruses.

The explanation of the results is a bit too lengthy and somewhat cumbersome.

The question that remain unclear if is this method of ventilation can be effectively used in many facilities along Japan and if it guarantees to some degree that there is a diminution in contagions. Such matters should be clarified and detailed if possible.

The authors should also describe alternatives at least in name, to the method they propose.

Minor flaw, at the beginning of the article the authors have written scarred instead of scared, altough is later corrected in the graphs afterwards. 

Summary of evaluation: This article is promising but could offer more incisive results. I have identified a few shortcomings in the experiments and methodology and I suggest that minor revisions are needed before final acceptance of this research.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Title: Studying the indoor environment and comfort of a university laboratory: Air-conditioning operation and natural ventilation used as a countermeasure against COVID-19

We resubmit the revised manuscript entitled “Studying the indoor environment and comfort of a university laboratory: Air-conditioning operation and natural ventilation used as a countermeasure against COVID-19” for publication as Buildings.

First of all, I would like to thank the reviewers.

Many comments and questions from reviewers improve the academic quality of this manuscript, and furthermore, it is accepted as a lot of advice for authors. thank you.

To summarize the reviewer's content, it was to write the introduction more clearly and to express the scope of the study in an easy-to-understand manner. And, it was a clear expression of what I wanted to say in this study. Some reviewers pointed out that the limitations of this study should be further explained. Therefore, we revised this manuscript according to the reviewers' comments, and deleted some parts.

Please check. Red text in the manuscript is the revised part.

Finally, this manuscript was proofread by an English expert.

We have revised the manuscript according to the reviewers' comments as much as possible, but please check this revised manuscript once again.

We appreciate your hard work.

Sincerely

Hyuntae Kim

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

It looks good after removing the facial expression measurement, which makes the manuscript less distracted from the topic.