Meeting everyday comfort needs¶
What claiming performance to the ARC standard requires: at least twelve months of measured data, and which comfort model applies where.
Meeting everyday comfort needs¶
Claiming that buildings are performing to the ARC standard requires using at least 12 months of measured data for interior and exterior temperature and humidity and entering this data into the ARC comfort model to gauge compliance with the criteria below. This exercise can be carried out for any spaces in the building that is being monitored. The performance of the building as a whole can be inferred from these results, but we encourage further monitoring and investigation of any areas where occupants report thermal discomfort in order to help design and building teams, and the cool buildings community to learn and improve their design and construction practices.
The comfort model that is used will depend on the location. With hundreds of local surveys conducted, based on the adaptive comfort method worldwide, many countries have identified what is found to be comfortable for their local populations, with some countries e.g. India incorporating it into an official standard.
Where these local survey results are available, projects owners can show that their building meets localised comfort expectations.
It's important that the local study used matches the project’s specific context as much as possible. For example, a comfort study carried out of residents in naturally ventilated houses would not be appropriate to be applied to assessing the performance of a centrally airconditioned office tower in the city centre. This is due to the differing expectations, acclimatisation (to unconditioned vs. conditioned spaces) and occupants' differing levels of control and opportunities to adapt their environment. However, the study might be used to assess deigns for naturally ventilated office space where occupants have desk-fans and relaxed dress codes.
For countries where a local model is not available, ARC has developed simple ‘success criteria’ to guide designers and builders. These are based on standard comfort models but informed by a ‘designer-friendly relative humidity-inclusive’ adaptive comfort model that ‘significantly extends the range of acceptable indoor conditions for designing low-energy naturally conditioned buildings all over the world’.
This is the approach that ARC applies when assessing the performance of buildings, the aim being to present building performance consistently across ARC’s Cool Buildings programme.
The ARC website provides a database of these studies.
Source: ARC Technical Criteria - 167
Reference · confidence medium · Imported 2026-09-12, not yet reviewed · next review 2026-12-12
Tags: untagged
Citation key: comfort-model