Effectiveness analysis of opening windows to control infection risk and indoor environment quality in school classrooms considering climate change

Natural ventilation via window openings is an efficient strategy to improve indoor environment quality and reduce infection risk. However, manual control of windows by occupants is only sometimes practical for maintaining the indoor environment in appropriate condition. Moreover, climate change and global warming have made controlling and predicting the conditions difficult. Designing a window controller based on selected objective functions and climate data can improve natural ventilation. In this study, a controller for window opening was developed to ventilate a classroom with 30 occupants naturally. The aim was to analyse the effectiveness of window controllers in controlling infection risk and the indoor environment under two climate data: present and projected for 2050. The results showed more window openings in cases related to 2050 rather than in the present case. Also, it was revealed that in future climate data, controller optimization keeps the acceptable conditions for more than 80% of the time. Wearing masks is necessary to maintain the probability of infection risk, and using air cleaners in the classroom is recommended for the future. In future cases, energy demand was reduced by 17% compared to the optimum case of present climate data.