What about children? Implications from their subjective perception and the risk of overheating in schools

During field surveys carried out by the authors, it was noticed that thermal perception voting of children is not in line with the expected thermal perceptions according to comfort models. Literature indicates that temperature may well be perceived differently by children, as compared to adults. At moderate temperatures, surveyed children seem to experience warmer thermal sensations than expected from the PMV-model. However, at elevated temperatures, children appeared to perceive environments as less warm than predicted by the model. Operative Temperature requirements for buildings (as mentioned in standards like EN 16798-1 and EN-ISO 7730) that are used primarily by children, most importantly schools, may therefore not provide adequate comfort for them. Does this mean that lowered temperature limits for environments where children are the main users should be used? Does this imply that mechanical cooling systems or intelligent passive cooling solutions should become ‘obligatory’ in school buildings where they can be afforded? Given the consequences of active school building cooling on energy use, it is therefore important to have a good understanding of this apparent discrepancy between how thermal comfort is perceived by adults and children. It is proposed in the paper that the thermal perception of children, and the consequences on the temperature requirements for schools is a subject that needs greater research, understanding and discussion.