Do Thermal Comfort Standards Ensure Occupant Satisfaction? Learning From Occupants' Thermal Complaints

Today, buildings are operated according to the standards (i.e. thermal), however; the recommended values in the standards might
not necessarily address occupants’ needs, and, thus, occupant complaints might arise. This study aims at assessing the
performance of the predicted mean vote (PMV) model to detect occupant thermal dissatisfaction. The case study was conducted in
a commercial building located in Paris, France between January 2017 and May 2018. Indoor environmental conditions were
monitored via sensors and an online tool was used to collect occupant thermal complaints. A total of 53 thermal complaints were
analyzed and the corresponding measurements were checked against the reference values suggested by the ISO 7730 Thermal
Comfort Standard. The results show that all of the operative temperature measurements both in the heating and cooling seasons
were within the thresholds suggested by the standards. In addition, the PMV method suggested that only 4% of the occupants
were dissatisfied with the indoor environment. However; the actual dissatisfaction ratio of occupants was 100% under these
indoor environmental conditions. The findings of this study show that predefined comfort ranges, and, thus thermal comfort
standards are not able to predict occupant thermal dissatisfaction.