Natural ventilation in classrooms: systematic and bibliometric review

Abstract

The classroom is an environment intended for prolonged permanence. Among these attributes are those related to its thermal comfort, whose importance for the quality of the teaching and learning process is already consolidated in the relevant literature. This article aims to verify the frequency and characterization of scientific works that address natural ventilation in classrooms. For this, a systematic and bibliometric review was carried out. The review focused on scientific articles indexed in the Web of Science, Scopus, Sage Journals and Scielo databases, considering a period of publications covering since 2001. Additionally, the Brazilian journals Ambiente Construído, Revista PARC: Pesquisa em Arquitetura and Revista Projetar: Projeto e Percepção do Ambiente were included in the databases. 172 references were selected on the subject. The results showed that, with the development of more robust software and platforms, simulation has been a widely used tool in the study of natural ventilation, in addition to the application of questionnaires. Also, the COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as a potential factor for the increase in articles that address natural ventilation in classrooms from the year 2020 onwards, compared to previous years. There is a growing importance of natural ventilation in classrooms, either to ensure thermal comfort with low energy expenditure, or to guarantee the quality of the indoor air, highlighting the United Kingdom and Brazil.