January 2009

BFRL Monthly Highlights

September 2008

October 2008

November 2008

December 2008

January 2009

MORE Highlights

---

BFRL Plays Lead Role in New Residential Indoor Air Quality Guideline

A new residential ventilation and indoor air quality guideline was recently published by ASHRAE, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air- Conditioning Engineers. ASHRAE Guideline 24-2008, Ventilation and Indoor Air Quality in Low-Rise Residential Buildings, was developed by ASHRAE Project Committee SSPC 62.2, chaired by Steven Emmerich of BFRL. Guideline 24-2008 is a companion document to ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 62.2-2007, Ventilation and Acceptable Indoor Air Quality in Low- Rise Residential Buildings, the only nationally recognized ventilation and IAQ standard developed solely for residences. The new guideline provides information on achieving good IAQ that goes beyond the minimum requirements contained in Standard 62.2 by providing explanatory and educational material not included in the standard. The guideline includes information on envelope and system design, material selection, commissioning and installation, and operation and maintenance. While Standard 62.2 contains the essential minimum requirements that all low-rise residential buildings need to meet to achieve acceptable IAQ, Guideline 24-2008 is an essential resource for designers, builders, and others looking for reliable information on topics not covered in the standard or seeking to go beyond the minimum for high performance construction. Topics covered range from fundamentals of building airflow to humidity control to verification of equipment performance.”

CONTACT:
Steven Emmerich
301-975-6459

BFRL Workshop Supports Improved Situation Awareness for First Responders

Accurate and timely emergency information is critical to ensuring effective decision-making for public safety officers. Whether there is a growing fire in a high-rise office or a security situation in a large building, reliable information is a key to deploying the right resources to the best location. BFRL recently held a workshop focused on delivering building information to emergency responders during emergencies to improve their situation awareness. The workshop focused on identifying the technical challenges and collaboration required for effective communication between the various stakeholders’ computing infrastructures. Key representatives from industry included the Central Station Alarm Association (CSAA); the National Emergency Number Association (NENA); the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); Montgomery County (Md.) and Fairfax County (Va.) Fire, Rescue, and Safety (FRS); along with major building equipment vendors Honeywell and Tyco.

The workshop identified several areas of research that will improve situation awareness for emergency responders, including: software access points and message routing between the various public safety networks; security requirements for accessing stakeholders’ computing infrastructures such as computer-aided dispatch systems; alert message content and classification; requirements for supporting building information servers and their networks; and user information presentation requirements. BFRL will work with industry stakeholders to resolve these research issues in order to improve situation awareness for the emergency responders.

CONTACT:
Alan Vinh
301-975-5260

Privacy Policy  /  Security Notice  /  Accessibility Disclaimer  |  FOIA  |  Information Quality  |  About NIST NIST is an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce