THERMAL ADAPTATION IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT - A LITERATURE-REVIEW

This paper presents the results of an extensive literature review on t he topic of thermal adaptation in the built environment. The adaptive approach to modeling thermal comfort acknowledges that thermal percept ion in 'real world' settings is influenced by the complexities of past thermal history and cultural and technical practices. An important pr emise of the adaptive model is that the person is no longer a passive recipient of the given thermal environment, but instead is an active a gent interacting with the person-environment system via multiple feedb ack loops. Thermal adaptation can be attributed to three different pro cesses-behavioral adjustment, physiological acclimatization and psycho logical habituation or expectation. Both climate chamber and field evi dence indicates that the slower process of acclimatization is not so r elevant to thermal adaptation in the relatively moderate conditions fo und in buildings, whereas behavioral adjustment and expectation have a much greater influence. One of the most important findings from our r eview of field evidence was the distinction between thermal comfort re sponses in air-conditioned vs. naturally ventilated buildings, most li kely resulting from a combination of past thermal history in the build ings and differences in levels of perceived control. (C) 1998 Publishe d by Elsevier Science S.A.