OSKU - an Application for Collecting User Feedback on Living Conditions in Buildings

Reducing energy consumption is currently a very topical area of research, but perhaps it is more a question of optimizing rather than reducing consumption. Preserving optimal working and living conditions within buildings should also be considered in combination with energy usage. The global rise in temperature caused by climate change may bring requirements for additional cooling of buildings, even in geographical areas that have not needed cooling in the past. In Finland, the winter months will require buildings to be heated to provide a comfortable indoor environment even in the future. A multitude of sensors exist for measuring quantities such as carbon dioxide, relative humidity, and temperature, but how well do the values measured by sensors match the subjective feelings of the people living or working inside buildings? In an attempt to discover how people feel in their working environment, we developed an application called OSKU for collecting user feedback concerning indoor air quality, and tested it in two real-life locations (a daycare center and a school), which were also fitted with sensors. In this paper we will describe the application, the use cases, and give an example of how we compared the feedback with the measured sensor values.