Smart Sensing competence for heritage building performance: An Experimental Field Study to Evaluate the Actual Smart Sensing Measurements of Thermal Comfort compared to POE Results

In the past few years, the field of thermal comfort has been using the term smart sensing widely. However, barriers may occur due to the inaccuracy of the data collected by smart sensing. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the thermal comfort of occupied heritage buildings by utilizing post occupancy evaluation (POE) as a tool in addition to smart sensing. The accuracy of the overall evaluation process using POE will be increased. The applicable case study presented in the paper is an office space within a building consider as a heritage building in Downtown Cairo. This paper argues the errors obtained due the inaccuracy of data collected from low-cost smart sensors to provide a list of assumed barriers in order to overcome them. The comparison between a POE study results and the actual thermal measurements results obtained from smart sensors installed to evaluate the office’s thermal comfort through evaluating the data collected for temperature and humidity in the period of 6 months during the summer. On the other hand, a questionnaire was taken by the occupants in the office to apply the POE study. Therefore, the results of both the data collected from sensors and the questionnaire from the POE study to determine the barriers caused by lack of accuracy.