Abstract
Thermal and visual comfort significantly influence the perception of an indoor environment and the subjective well-being of people. In this context, the present research focuses on the evaluation of the indoor comfort in a healthcare facility in Vienna, Austria. Short and long-term monitoring of air/globe temperatures, relative humidity, air velocity, lighting levels has been performed. Additionally, both patients and employees have been asked to assess indoor environment by means of questionnaires. Combining answerers’ activity and clothing levels with measurements, Fanger’s Predicted Mean Vote and Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfied have been calculated according to the European standard (ISO 7730). Furthermore, the comfort indexes have been compared with the collected votes from the survey. Both approaches for the assessment of indoor thermal comfort highlight differences between the two categories of occupants. However, for this case, Fanger’s model over-predicts the percentage of dissatisfied and gives larger sensitivity to changes of the activity level because of patients’ therapies. Lighting levels are found generally lower than recommended, but they have been rated acceptable by both patients and employees.