INTERREG V Cooperation programme

3SqAir – 3S quAIRlity: Sustainable Smart Strategy for Air Quality Assurance in Classrooms

Specific programme: Cooperation Programme Interreg V-A España-Francia-Andorra (Interreg SUDOE)

UPV/EHU Partner Status: Beneficiary

UPV/EHU PI: XABAT OREGI ISASI

Project start: 01/11/2020

Project end: 30/04/2023

Financing: 75% through ERDF funds and 25% through self-financing

Brief description: This cross-border project addresses the challenge of designing a common action plan for smart specialization of indoor air quality (IAQ) assurance in SUDOE’s classrooms. Air quality affects public health and recently its importance has been measured with the Covid19 pandemic. Gathering a multi-stakeholder discussion is part of social responsibility for an indoor health-based criteria.

The main objective of 3SqAir project is to develop a common strategy to assure optimal IAQ in educational buildings, implementing innovative, sustainable and smart solutions ranging from passive and active IAQ equipment, low-carbon technologies, automatic and manual actions to human behavior changes. Thus, the IAQ improvement strategy not only focuses on technical aspects, but also includes social factors such as user behavior and intellectual performance through proposing educational activities in order to raise awareness and to enhance student participation. Both approaches are essential and complementary to achieve an upgrade of IAQ, energy efficiency, health and well-being, addressing transnational and transversal challenges in educational buildings. Transnational cooperation is needed to assess the impact of cultural, technical and legal aspects of SUDOE space on the deployment of IAQ improvement plans.

3S quAIRlity will establish a RIS3 Strategy assuring IAQ in SUDOE’s Classrooms as main product, providing other linked products such as a methodological framework for classrooms, awareness campaigns, a best practice online platform and  open-source and open-hardware IoT platform. The project will provide pilot sites covering different educational levels, where will be implemented an innovative Building Energy Management System methodology, that allows the selection and integration of IAQ improvement solutions. During all project activities, an expert community will be established, which creates technological transfer and value for multi-stakeholder groups. The innovative aspect of the project is the IoT solution designed, which enables easier and cheaper reproduction and continuous updating, in contrast to commercial software. The project also includes innovative methods to measure the individual well-being of classroom’s users in correlation with IAQ.