ATLANTA, Georgia, United States, 10 August 2020: ASHRAE has announced that the IAQ 2020 conference, scheduled to take place from September 14 to 16, 2020 in Athens, Greece, has been postponed – it will now take place from September 13 to 15, 2021. In line with that, the Society has issued a new call for papers. The deadline for submitting abstracts is December 21, 2020. It made the announcement through a Press release.

Organised by ASHRAE and the Air Infiltration and Ventilation Centre (AIVC), the theme of the conference, “Indoor Environmental Quality Performance Approaches”, focuses on the metrics, systems, sensors and norms necessary to implement performance approaches, ASHRAE said in the release.

“Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) has been the core of ASHRAE’S IAQ series of conferences for the past 30 years,” said Max Sherman, Co-Chair, IAQ 2020. “This conference has expanded from only covering indoor air quality concerns to exploring indoor environmental quality, which includes indoor air pollution, thermal conditions, acoustics and illumination and their interactions. The COVID-19 crisis has required us to hold IAQ2020 one year later but allowed us to expand the scope further to include IAQ in a post-COVID world.”

In addition to the original conference topics, the conference steering committee is seeking papers related to the scientific challenges the world faces following the COVID-19 pandemic, which include:

• Role of ventilation and building airtightness in epidemic preparedness
• Filtration and disinfectant options to control COVID-19
• Face-covering impacts on indoor air quality
• HVAC and IEQ in a post-COVID world

According to the release, authors have the option of submitting either a conference paper or an extended abstract and to state their preference for either an oral or poster presentation. Submissions are due December 21, 2020. If accepted, ASHRAE said, complete manuscript submissions are due April 19, 2021.