Environmental Comfort in Hospitals
A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Building Energy, Physics, Environment, and Systems".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2023) | Viewed by 34932
Special Issue Editors
Interests: building physics; acoustic comfort; architecture technology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: hospital design; healthy spaces; layout configuration analysis
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Hospitals include a variety of different spaces with different sensitivity and environmental requirements both for patients and for personnel. Thermal, lighting, and acoustic comfort is very important for patients as well as visual comfort and humanized environment: they can facilitate or make patients’ rehabilitation more complex. Hospital staff, who often spend many hours continuously in closed hospital environments, is usually very sensitive to environmental conditions.
The layout configuration inside a hospital must be planned with regard to the potential conflict between different requirements. Indeed, environmental requirements can be very different in indoor spaces close to each other. The need for doctors and nurses to monitor patients’ health often conflicts with patients’ need for rest. The use of medical equipment often requires conditions that cannot be waived but which are not comfortable for the patients. For example, concerning acoustic comfort, in hospitals, there are different activities and equipment that can cause high noise levels.
Aspects relating to the relationship between space design and work activities also contribute to increasing the level of environmental comfort. In this context, ergonomics and environmental control and management methods can be examined in relation to both the design and the space management phases.
Despite the number of regulations that refer to hospitals, environmental comfort for patients and medical staff is not an easy task.
The need to create healthy spaces suitable for various types of use entails difficulties in identifying where and how to apply the limits set by the legislation while there are situations in which, regardless of the legislation, it would be opportune to consider a more adequate environmental control.
Sensory environments, where light and sound can be controlled, help to reduce stress in patients and staff.
In this Special Issue, articles are expected on environmental design, sensory environment, layout configuration, management parameters and methods, aspects related to human factors and legislation, and the results of physical parameter measurements in hospitals.
Prof. Dr. Simone Secchi
Prof. Dr. Nicoletta Setola
Prof. Dr. Luca Marzi
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- hospitals
- environmental comfort
- acoustic quality
- lighting
- thermal comfort
- digital space control
- digital healthcare systems (DHS)
- human factors
- ergonomics
- path
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