HARMONISE

HARMONISE studies how short bursts of heat, noise, poor air and inadequate lighting affect health in offices. The project builds a health-based way to compare these risks across the four IEQ domains (thermal, acoustic, luminous and indoor air quality).

Impacts are expressed with a standard public-health indicator called Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs). A DALY condenses time lived with illness and time lost to premature death into a single metric. Using DALYs lets different risks be compared on the same scale.

HARMONISE combines three strands:
• evidence synthesis (systematic reviews and meta-analyses from toxicology and epidemiology);
• targeted monitoring in office buildings to capture levels and interactions across IEQ domains;
• statistical models that link measured exposures to health impact, including uncertainty.

What will come out
The project will deliver:
• open, documented acute-harm metrics and a concise IEQ monitoring protocol;
• a curated office IEQ dataset;
• open-access scientific papers, conference presentations and practical sheets for practitioners;
• reusable code and templates released via Eurac repositories.
These results support health-based IEQ assessment and can inform future standards and policies.

Collaboration & funding
Work is carried out at Eurac Research.

This project was awarded under the EU Horizon Europe 2024 MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship call and is funded by the Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen through the Seal of Excellence scheme (Decree No. 4400/2025).