(A06) How Good Is Your Ventilation? Indoor Air Quality and the Passenger Experience Within Airports

Indoor air quality (IAQ) has been examined in detail at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) to determine levels of exposure to indoor air pollutants for staff and passengers using Harvey Milk Terminal 1 Boarding B as part of its stated objective that it is rated the best terminal in the world and be the industry leader in safety and security. It is the first airport to seek a WELL Building Standard rating and LEED certification.

Aircraft engine emissions produce high volumes of emission containing VOCs such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes (BTEX) and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) such as naphthalene, as well as other pollutants like oxides of nitrogen and sulfur, and particulate matter. Significant emissions are generated during engine idling and taxing. These emissions can and do impact the staff and passengers using the airport through ingress into the buildings and the surrounding aprons.

SFO wished to bring the innovative flair of San Francisco and Silicon Valley to look at revolutionary technology solutions to understand and measure the impact of outdoor air quality on the indoor environment. SFO seeks to make informed decisions based the real time data being captured to optimise the indoor environmental quality, to revolutionize the passenger experience and keep their staff safe and well.

This presentation will look at the air quality requirements within the WELL and LEED v4/4.1 BD+C New Construction standards and show how technology, engineering and scientific application can be used to meet and exceed these standards within the complex environment of an international airport. It will look at the technologies required to monitor and measure the key contaminants and the strengths and weaknesses of doing this in real time. It will discuss how a trial was set up to look at different sensor arrays to monitor both outdoor air quality and indoor air quality, and how this type of arrangement can demonstrate the level of correlation between the two and the effectiveness of a building’s ventilation and filtration systems. It will look at cost benefit analysis of adopting this type of technology and how these fits into building certification schemes such as WELL and LEED.