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Ulrike Passe, professor of architecture, presented an invited keynote on “Improving ventilation on the macro and micro scale” at the 2022 Comfort at the Extremes (CATE) Conference with specific focus on Resilient Comfort: Climate Change, COVID and Ventilation held Sept. 5–6 at The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

In this talk, Passe expanded the information in her book, Designing Spaces for Natural Ventilation, into urban environmental modeling and simulation based on new long-term research questions as boundary conditions for design including the urban micro-climate, especially urban surfaces used for trees and vegetation around the building including such complex biophysical processes as energy impacts of trees on building interior and the urban climate to counter overheating. On the micro-level, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought building ventilation into the focus of the public health discussion about mitigation of virus spread. Natural and mechanical ventilation in the U.S. Midwestern climate is directly related to energy use due to the extremely cold winters and warm and humid summers.

The talk covered some current work being done in developing best practices for ventilation upgrades in school buildings to increased air change rates while assessing the spatial constraints of existing mechanical systems, with lessons learned about ventilation design and operation of buildings between these two scales.