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. 2022 Jun 1:217:109067.
doi: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2022.109067. Epub 2022 Apr 17.

Tempo-spatial infection risk assessment of airborne virus via CO2 concentration field monitoring in built environment

Haida Tang  1 , Zhenyu Pan  1 , Chunying Li  1
Affiliations

Tempo-spatial infection risk assessment of airborne virus via CO2 concentration field monitoring in built environment

Haida Tang et al. Build Environ. .

Abstract

The aerosol transmission was academically recognized as a possible transmission route of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We established an approach to assess the indoor tempo-spatial airborne-disease infection risks through aerosol transmission via real-time CO2 field measurement and occupancy monitoring. Compared to former studies, the proposed method can evaluate real-time airborne disease infection risks through aerosol transmission routes. The approach was utilized in a university office. The accumulated infection risk was calculated for three occupants with practical working schedules (from occupancy recording) and one hypothesis occupant with a typical working schedule. COVID-19 was used as an example. Results demonstrated that the individual infection risks diversified with different dwell times and working places in the office. For the three occupants with a practical working schedule, their 3-day accumulated infection risks were respectively 0.050%, 0.035%, 0.027% and 0.041% due to 11.6, 9.0 and 13.8 h exposure with an initial infector percentage of 1%. The results demonstrate that location and dwell time are both important factors influencing the infection risk of certain occupant in built environment, whereas existing literature seldom took these two points into consideration simultaneously. On the contrary, our proposed approach treated the infection risks as place-by-place, time-by-time and person-by-person diversified in the built environment. The risk assessment results can provide early warning for building occupants and contribute to the transmission control of air-borne disease.

Keywords: Aerosol transmission; COVID-19; Infection risk; Tracer gas.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Spreading of exhaled CO2 and airborne virus in the air.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Flow chart of the methodology.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Schematic diagram and floor plan of the office.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Occupancy conditions of the office during the measurement.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Variations of indoor/outdoor CO2 concentrations during the measurement.
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Relationship between population and Indoor/outdoor CO2 concentration difference at Point 1 (a), Point 2 (b), Point 3 (c), Point 4 (d) and box plot of data distribution (e).
Fig. 7
Fig. 7
Accumulated infection risks at Point 1 with typical office working schedule.
Fig. 8
Fig. 8
Accumulated infection risks at Points 1–4 with surveyed occupancy condition.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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Further reading

    1. Liu Zhijian, Zhang P., Li Y., Yang W., Guo J., Liu J., Yao G. Assessment of spatial concentration variation and deposition of bioaerosol in a dental clinic during oral cleaning. Build. Environ. 2021;202 doi: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2021.108024. - DOI
    1. Zhang Y., Wang Y., Wang F., Xu X., Wu X. Numerical investigation on the transmission and dispersion of aerosols in a 7-stories building drainage system. Build. Environ. 2021;201 doi: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2021.108009. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. van Doremalen N., Bushmaker T., Morris D.H., Holbrook M.G., Gamble A., Williamson B.N., Tamin A., Harcourt J.L., Thornburg N.J., Gerber S.I., Lloyd-Smith J.O., de Wit E., Munster V.J. Aerosol and surface Stability of SARS-CoV-2 as compared with SARS-CoV-1. N. Engl. J. Med. 2020;382:1564–1567. doi: 10.1056/NEJMc2004973. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Meteorological bureau of Shenzhen municipality. http://weather.sz.gov.cn/ [WWW Document], n.d. URL. 3.9.22.

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