[PhD Defense] Dr. Muriel Diaz, Methodology for the evaluation of Indoor Environmental Quality in school classrooms

Congrats to Dr. MURIEL DIAZ for an excellent dissertation. The Ph.D. was defended on Friday, 17th of November 2023, at 13:00 in B28 Auditorium R07 at Liège University, Belgium. Dr. Diaz demonstrated significant skill in using statistical analysis and regression techniques to develop a multicriteria evaluation index for indoor environmental quality in school classrooms during COVID-19.

Her research evolved around the following question:

✅ To what extent will students be forgiving with certain aspects of IEQ while other thresholds are met? Where forgiveness is a derived score obtained by dividing the score for the summary variable “comfort overall” by the average of the summary variables for temperature in summer and winter, ventilation/air in summer and winter, and noise and lighting.

This dissertation is a manuscript-based PhD, and Dr. Diaz published different types of publications during her research endeavor:

Diaz, M., Cools, M., Trebilcock, M., Piderit-Moreno, B., & Attia, S. (2021). Effects of Climatic Conditions, Season and Environmental Factors on CO2 Concentrations in Naturally Ventilated Primary Schools in Chile. Sustainability, 13(8), 4139. https://lnkd.in/eadVRyZq

Diaz, M., Gonzalez-Caceres, A., & Attia, S. (2023). Multicriteria Design: Optimizing Thermal, Acoustic, and Visual Comfort and Indoor Air Quality in Classrooms (pp. 435–449). https://lnkd.in/e-Yx3u2B

 This PhD aims to develop an indicator that will allow weighting of the relevance of the four aspects of IEQ, with respect to the general comfort of students in school classrooms, allowing the evaluation and comparison of the quality of the spaces. The following working objectives are defined to prove the hypothesis that students will be more indulgent (or forgiving) with certain aspects of IEQ while other thresholds are met.

The Ph.D. can be downloaded for free. https://lnkd.in/eJYiSazG

Congratulations to Dr.MURIEL DIAZ, who successfully defended her joint degree Ph.D. dissertation at Liege University and the University of Bio-Bio under the supervision of Beatriz Piderit and Shady Attia. A big and warm thanks to the jury members, Prof. Dr. Carolina Margarita (Stevenson) Rodriguez, Prof. Dr. Maria Isabel Rivera, Prof. Dr. Sigrid Reiter, and Prof. Dr. Maureen Trebilcock for their time and dedication in reviewing this 5 years exciting project. All the best for Dr. Diaz's future career.

This Ph.D. was the fruit of two collaboration projects between the Federation Wallonia Brussels and the Chilean Government. The Ph.D. is partially funded by Liege University under the HERES, 2019-2022, Healthy and Resilient Schools in Chile and Belgium and RELI, 2018-2022, Resilience and Net-Zero Energy Buildings in Chile.

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#multidomain; #combinedeffects; #Indoorenvironmentalquality; #index; #school; #classrooms, #covid19