Abstract
The intersection between user comfort, Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ), and energy usage forms a sustainable built environment centered around user needs. The European Union is seeking to reduce the energy consumption of the building sector, however, effectively balancing the three aspects remains a major challenge. Following the energy-efficient renovation, the energy performance has been studied and discussed amongst researchers, but significant gaps remain in investigating its impact on IEQ and user comfort in real settings.The primary goal of this study is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the IEQ, focusing on thermal comfort and indoor air quality within university buildings before and after renovations by taken into account the users' satisfaction. For these objectives, climate sensors and electric meters were installed within the IUT of Nîmes campus, situated in the south of France under a Mediterranean climate. A total of 43 classrooms, 35 workshop rooms, and 16 offices across four buildings on the campus were equipped with climate sensors, which have been continuously monitoring indoor temperature, relative humidity, and CO2 levels since 2020. Moreover, field surveys were conducted four times to report the students' IEQ perceptions in response to the building states (pre- and post-renovation) during the winter and summer. To assess thermal comfort, this study employed both rational and adaptive approaches.The study reveals an ongoing challenge with attaining thermal comfort in the IUT of Nîmes during the summer, particularly in the workshop rooms despite renovations due to the region's hot climate conditions. Overall, the renovated buildings have proved to perform better in terms of energy usage without excessively compromising indoor climates or users’ comfort. However, it is noteworthy that the now-airtight buildings have made indoor air quality more reliant on mechanical ventilation systems, raising concerns about maintaining a consistent and adequate ventilation rate.Previous LMGC theses on the subject (Batier, Abbas) used very simplified scenarios. This research concludes that studying the parameters of real buildings is very complex and renders the analysis imprecise because of the various uncontrollable variables such as indoor and outdoor environmental conditions, activities, and occupant behavior. In the future, an intermediary between the two approaches should be considered.