The connection between the quality of the indoor environment and health, well-being and learning ability in schools has been known for a long time. The indoor environment in schools is important for almost 800,000 people in Norway - school pupils and students, teachers and other staff. The occupants are not only exposed to the indoor environment, but also affect it in many ways, but are largely unaware of their influences; at the same time, responsibility - and budgets - for the indoor environment rests with the schools' owners, municipalities and county councils.
The vision of DIGG-MIN-SKOLE is to utilize new technology to ensure students and staff in Norwegian schools an indoor climate that promotes health, well-being, learning ability and productivity and contributes to cost-effective management of school buildings. DIGG-MIN-SKOLE will develop tools that contribute to increased user involvement in indoor climate work at school, better workflow, increased knowledge on Health, Environment and Safety and internal control work, and better management of technical systems for optimal indoor climate. To achieve this, we will combine data from the school's indoor climate sensor systems and data related to user experience. With the help of machine learning, we want to understand the connections between this data, and identify which conditions are suitable to trigger action at school/classroom level. The school's staff and pupils must contribute to the design of various (sub)tools so that the results are suitable for use in the school's everyday life. The end result will be a technical specification and demonstration of a user-oriented management system at several schools which will provide a basis for the results' scaling-up possibilities.
In the first part of the project, all of the project's participants – researchers, representatives of the school's owners in Oslo and Volda municipalities, the Norwegian Asthma and Allergy Association and our industry partners from the insurance and ventilation industry – have contributed to developing a concept for possible functionalities in such a tool, its possible form, and how the different user groups at the school can make use of it. We have also worked on the "engine" of the intended tool: we have created data flows to obtain information from students and the technical installations at four schools, developed new tools for data collection from students, and tried out AI modeling tools to identify which parameters which is important for the students' perception of their indoor environment.
It is important to us that all tools, both for data collection/entry and for making information available in schools, are adapted to the target groups as much as possible. We have kept in close contact with the participating schools where students and staff have commented on various versions of our tools and given us useful input on what might be useful. We have also connected to key users who can benefit from our tools through an external advisory group.
In order to adapt the tools to pupils/students, we have asked pupils for help. In 2023, we collaborated with 7th grade pupils who helped us with the graphic design of the tool for collecting the students' perception of the indoor environment. At the end of May 2024, we had the pleasure of welcoming another two students from the 7th grade to NILU for a job shadowing day. They actively participated in discussions about how information about indoor climate can best be communicated to students. They shared their thoughts on effective and least disruptive methods to warn of changes in the indoor climate, which can lead to discomfort. The proposals included digital surfaces, paper format and messages from teachers. The students also discussed how they themselves want to report discomfort related to indoor climate.The students' input is valuable to us and will be integrated into the development of a user-oriented management system (BOF). This system, which we will develop during the autumn of 2024, will be demonstrated in several schools and lay the foundation for further scaling up of the project results.
Godt inneklima på skolen er viktig for helse og trivsel hos elever og ansatte, og har vesentlig påvirkning på elevenes læringsutbytte. Godt vedlikehold av bygg og drift av de tekniske anleggene er viktig for å få et godt inneklima, men i tillegg er det avgjørende at ansatte og elever bruker skolebyggene riktig og involveres i praktisk inneklimaarbeid på skolenivå. Dette krever at ansatte og elever er bevisst på og har kunnskap om hvordan deres adferd påvirker inneklima, samt hvordan den enkelte kan bidra for å ivareta et så godt inneklima på skolen som mulig.
Data fra inneklimasensorer, kombinert med informasjon om hvordan ansatte og elever opplever inneklima og relaterte helseplager, kan gi nye muligheter for både å identifisere inneklimaproblemer, finne årsak og identifisere riktige tiltak, og til å lage nye verktøy som engasjerer og involverer brukerne av skolebyggene. Dagens skoler er utstyrt i stor grad med sensorsystemer for inneklima, men det finnes ingen verktøy for å samle inn data om brukeropplevelser. Data fra integrerte sensorer er i liten grad tilgjengelig for skolen. Informasjon om sammenhenger mellom sensordata og opplevelser mangler i dag.
DIGG-MIN-SKOLE skal kombinere data fra sensorer som er en integrert del av skolens tekniske anlegg og/eller enkeltstående inneklimasensorer med egen-innhentede data knyttet til brukeropplevelse. Dataene skal benyttes til å utvikle en maskinlæringsmodell som kan anslå sannsynligheten for at brukerne vil oppleve nedsatt trivsel/helseplager, hvilke faktorer i inneklimaet som mest sannsynlig er årsaken til helseplagene (temperatur, lysforhold, støy, CO2 m.m) og identifisere målrettede avbøtende tiltak på skole/klasseromsnivå. Enhetsledere, ansatte og elever skal medvirke til utformingen av (del)verktøy slik at resultatene fra maskinlæringsmodellen blir egnet for bruk i skolens hverdag. Sluttresultatet blir en teknisk spesifikasjon og demonstrasjon av et bruker-orientert forvaltningssystem (BOF) på flere skoler.
