Building ventilation and COVID-19 transmission

The Air Infiltration and Ventilation Centre (AIVC), in collaboration with IEA EBC Annex 86, are organising a free webinar discussing the impact of building ventilation on COVID-19 transmission.

The webinar, titled “Building ventilation: How does it affect SARS-Cov-2 transmission”, is part of a series of three webinars.

This session will address the potential mitigating role of building ventilation in the spread of COVID-19.

In the first part of the webinar, the workshop will look at building ventilation as one of the mechanisms that affects exposure to infectious aerosol and the uncertainty in relating exposure to airborne transmission of the virus.

The second part will focus on airflow in real indoor environments, with results from field experiments with aerosol sources and the use of pressure difference in buildings to control the spread of aerosols.

Arnold Janssens, Chair of AIVC WG COVID-19, Ghent University, Belgium, will kick off the proceedings with an introduction. This will be followed by a presentation on “The role of building ventilation in indoor infectious aerosol exposure”, by Andrew Persily, NIST, USA.

Other presentations include: “Modelling uncertainty in the relative risk of exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus by airborne aerosol transmission” by Cath Noakes, University of Leeds, UK; “Field measurements of aerosol exposure in indoor environments” by Wouter Borsboom, TNO, Netherlands; and “Ventilation system design and the risk areas for spreading airborne contaminants in office buildings” by Alireza Afshari, Aalborg University, Denmark.

There will be Q&A sessions following each pair of talks.

The webinar will be held on April 1, 2021, from 5-6.30pm (Central European Time). The corresponding Australian times are April 2, from 2am-3.30am (NSW, Vic, ACT, Tas) | 1.30am-3am (SA) | 1am-2.30am (Qld) | 12.30am-2am ­­ (NT) | 12am-1.30am (WA).

The other two webinars in the series are “IAQ and ventilation” on April 8, 2021, and “Big data, IAQ and ventilation” on April 13, 2021.

Click here to register for the event.