We live in a world dominated by modes of thinking that often do not yield promising outcomes. Deficient processes and wasteful consumption add to the complexity of our broken climate and deteriorating urban air quality. Early signs of climate change are not the only challenges confronting our planet and the chances to thrive. Spiraling food and energy prices, plummeting wages, and crumbling infrastructure and public services further highlight the importance of sustainable urban planning and development in cities. However, there is hope for positive change if accompanied by a social movement, particularly when addressing inhabiting modern cities.

By reinvigorating resource utilisation and business practices, we can bend the arc of our polluting behaviour towards sustainable living. One advantage of urbanising is the luxury of leveraging access to many advanced technologies in building construction materials, insulation, filtration, and broad Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) technologies. This presents a unique opportunity to align urban living with human-centric targets, placing the health and wellbeing of citizens at the forefront of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Space cooling

Four decades ago, minimal technology existed in buildings, limited to public telecommunications utility and a pneumatic control system for the HVAC system. Today, technologies influence building design, construction and operation and will continue to do so. The beginning of the 20th century also marked the birth of air conditioning, an invention that had a major impact on the indoor environment. Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore’s prosperity, once stated that the air conditioner was the most important technological innovation of the 20th century. Although air conditioning is still a luxury few can afford, particularly in cities in the developing world, the Future of Cooling report highlights the growing demand for space cooling, leading to a rapid increase in air conditioners and electric fans acquisitions¹. Today, building construction, operations, and appliances and equipment installed in them account for 30% of global final energy consumption². On the other hand, space cooling alone consumes one-fifth of all electricity used in buildings, worldwide¹. These statistics underscore the growing demand for thermal comfort for human development, health, wellbeing and economic productivity but also highlight the opportunity to reduce energy use and promote sustainability.

It would be naïve to neglect the nexus between thermal comfort and the indoor environment, which history dates to Florence Nightingale’s first address. Nightingale (1820-1910), a nurse and statistician, wrote the first modern handbook for the nursing of the sick, called Notes on Nursing, in which she advocated for ventilating rooms housing wounded soldiers³. Her well-known recommendation, which saved lives, was “to keep the air he breathes as pure as the external air, without chilling him”. Given the rising tide of air pollution resulting from rapid urbanisation, industrialisation, and transport, such a task is complex by many measures, as the outdoors can be heavily polluted with many contaminants. Therefore, building designers and HVAC engineers ought to design a system-thinking approach to achieve healthy city dwellings through sustainable cooling technologies and practices. Healthcare facilities are no exception.

Claiming that we can predict the future by simply squinting through city landscape sights to shape the trajectory of prosperity is a fallacy. Despite the imperative of achieving environmental compliance, we are still running amok in terms of anthropogenic emissions, adding various pollutant types and concentrations to the urban environment. Ultimately, we need to redo the math of our industrial processes and revisit building design and operation, as they represent the cornerstone of cities, where sustainability must be sought as a core urban undertaking. An air quality-inclusive approach to building systems employing HVAC equipment is essential to capitalise on the performance synergies to comfort occupants and save energy. System thinking necessitates shunning conventional wisdom and adopting more holistic mechanisms for re-imagining a built environment where occupants’ health, safety and wellbeing drive the premise of building designs. Ultimately, we must avoid adhering to a singular and linear perspective when embracing sustainable built environment design and development. Instead, we must urgently adopt a more comprehensive plan considering systems’ interactions and impacts on human health, particularly from an air quality inclusion standpoint.

Cities, as complex systems deeply intertwined with the built environment, significantly influence overall system performance. However, external factors, such as air pollution, pandemics, wildfires and heat waves are challenging the resilience and adaptability of buildings, no matter how well-designed. The relatively recent COVID-19 pandemic, which briefly brought air quality to the forefront only to recede when cases declined, highlights our susceptibility to external influences and tendency to return to our mean behaviour. Waiting for crises to prompt action is unsustainable, and solely relying on filtration quick-fixes that usually fail and on primitive HVAC equipment for thermal comfort is myopic. These may accelerate the emergence of future pandemics.

The essence of system thinking is the synergetic performance through the employment of data acquisitions and feedback loops. System thinking facilitates data-driven decisions where maintenance teams identify air quality issues before they become critical, such as filter performance, premature clogging, leaks or any associated system malfunctions, thus preventing further contamination. By utilising AI and machine learning, air quality data and HVAC performance can be analysed to ensure efficient operation while providing clean and fresh air indoors.

When integrating the overall performance of a building and its equipment, the premise of a system should first include and govern air quality in the early stages of urban planning rather than be an afterthought of a building handover. For air filter performance to ascend the height of capture efficiency, air filters must operate within a modular system that appropriately delivers the desired Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) to protect occupants by responding to dynamic pollutant concentrations. Air quality monitoring systems must be interfaced with HVAC equipment and building management systems to accommodate the filtration demands arising from deteriorating ambient conditions.

No decision is a decision

We all aspire to decent living where our health and wellbeing are equally served. IAQ is a key metric by which buildings’ envelopes are rated and celebrated for healthy living. Modest IAQ outcomes can undermine both the designers setting the expectations for clean and fresh air requirements and the responsible facility managers agreeing to ensure their sustainable indoor delivery. Aspiring to attain the best IAQ outcomes requires system thinking encompassing a sound infrastructure of technologies capable of controlling and managing the living conditions in building envelopes. Policymakers can lead this change by prioritising integrated building performance and clarifying air quality certification and regulation accompanied by an incentive programme to meet and exceed minimum clean and fresh air requirements. Governments can also drive change with banks and industrial leaders to play a role in availing and financing the infrastructure and retrofitting needed to place the wellbeing of human occupants at the forefront of building envelope practices and priorities.

Confronting the emerging reality revealed by deteriorating urban conditions and IAQ reminds us of how we broke our climate with our polluting profiles and inability to embrace social change towards sustainability. We must decide if we want to act on the environmental agreements and scale up our climate ambitions to protect our environment. Perhaps we can all draw inspiration from William James, who stated, “No decision is, in itself, a decision.” His statement reminds us of the magnitude of our environmental crises and the price of inaction impacting corporations, communities and countries. The message is clear, we all have a role to play in fixing our relationship with our planet.

A lasting change

To create lasting change, we need strong governance, behavioral change and strategic planning to promote sustainable living in urban areas. Instead of seeing a building as just a collection of parts, we ought to view it as an integrated system that produces promising outcomes. Achieving optimal building performance is crucial for defining sustainable living in modern cities while ensuring the delivery of clean and fresh air, which is, in many ways, a moral obligation. These goals can be achieved by integrating the performance of HVAC equipment, urban air quality monitoring and adaptive filtration through coordination rather than addressing them as last-minute desperation. By embracing a system-thinking approach, we can develop comprehensive, effective and sustainable solutions that support a healthier living environment and encourage a shift from passive consumers to active contributors to our only planet.

[1] IEA (2018), The Future of Cooling, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-cooling, Licence: CC BY 4.0

[2] International Energy Agency https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings

[3] Nightingale, F., 1992. Notes on nursing: What it is, and what it is not. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Dr Iyad Al-Attar, an independent air filtration consultant, writes on specific science and technology issues relating to Indoor Air Quality, including airborne particles. He may be reached at iyadalattar@yahoo.com