A weapon of mass creation to improve office building comfort

A group of researchers from the University of Sydney's Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) Lab has developed world-leading technology to measure and improve the indoor human comfort factor of office buildings. The compact, box-shaped device known as SAMBA is a highly sophisticated unit created over the last two years by researchers from the IEQ Lab within the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning. SAMBA is designed to measure air temperate and speed, humidity, light, sound and air pollutants - the key factors shown to have the greatest impact on an office worker's health, comfort and productivity. The device is built on sensor technology that relays information about a building's indoor environment back to a central computer for further analysis. SAMBA is already capturing industry attention in Australia by becoming the People's Choice winner of the 'Weapons of Mass Creation' innovation award at the Green Cities 2015 conference in Melbourne yesterday. It is also shortlisted for the Property Council of Australia's 2015 Innovation & Excellence Awards to be announced in Sydney on 1 May. The new technology is the brainchild of PhD student Tom Parkinson, who developed the idea with his brother and IEQ research assistant Alex Parkinson, under the leadership of Professor Richard de Dear, Head of Architectural Science at the University of Sydney.