Due to concerns about potential airborne chemical and biological releases in or near buildings, building owners and managers and other decision makers are faced with a number of options for increasing their building s level of protection against such events. Among the various technologies and approaches being proposed and implemented is shelter-in-place (SIP). SIP strategies involve having the building occupants stay in the building, generally in a space designated for such sheltering, until the event is over and the outdoor contaminant levels have decreased. While much guidance is available...

LoopDA 3.0 is an update to version 1.0 of the natural ventilation design tool developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. This software tool can be utilized to determine the size of natural ventilation openings necessary to provide a airflow rates that satisfy design requirements based on minimum ventilation and cooling load requirements.

Sixteen reference buildings have been defined by the U.S. Department of Energy, and created as EnergyPlus input files, for use in assessing new technologies and supporting the development of energy codes in pursuing building energy efficiency improvements. Infiltration rates in the EnergyPlus models of the reference buildings were input as constant airflow rates, and not calculated based on established building airflow theory. In order to support more physically-based airflow calculations, as well as indoor air quality analysis, models of the 16 reference buildings were created in the...