Multi-Room Dwelling Environment Function

Description

Function to prepare the environmental input for the "Multi-Room Dwelling" exposure simulation model (ESM)

Usage

esm.MRD.input.environ(instances, inputs, index.inputs = NULL,
                      char.inputs = NULL, times, timeres,
                      breaks = TRUE, options = NULL,
                      silent = FALSE)

Arguments

Details

This function prepares the ``environment'' for a multi-room dwelling simulation, which consists of house and occupant characteristics that impact exposure. It takes as input an instances list containing current data and index components for the house occupants, and returns the updated instances list. The inputs list argument contains the raw data input for the simulation. The expected components are as follows:

EN$SCEN

an 18-element numeric vector interpreted as a binary specification of the exposure scenario, containing 0's for ``off'' conditions, 1's for ``on'' conditions, and 2's for bits that will be randomly sampled as either 0 or 1. See below for details on each bit.

EN$LOC

a named list containing one or more codes for each type of ``potential'' location the occupants can visit in the home. The names of the list, and their corresponding meanings, are expected to be one or more of the following:

KIT

Kitchen

DIN

Dining Room

LIV

Living Room

BED

Bedroom

AUX

Office, Study

HALL

Moving about from room to room

BATH

Bathroom

GAR

Garage

BASE

Basement

LAUN

Laundry Room

EN$SLEEP

a vector of event codes corresponding to times when the house occupants are sleeping

EN$SMKLOC

an optional vector of codes, which are a subset of those in LOC, where smoking is allowed to occur in the home. If not given, the smoking rooms are determined from the SCEN specification.

The expected components in instances are data, containing simulated data values for the current house and occupants, and index, containing demographic and other information corresponding to each piece of data. The data component should have the following sub-components:

RA

the raw time-activity of the receptor-person, tact object

SA

the raw time-activity of the source-person, tact object

EM$MAG

the pollution emission rate, mass per unit time

EM$DUR

the duration of an emission episode

EM$CIGS

the number of cigarettes smoked in a day by the receptor person

The index component of instances should contain components for each occupant as follows:

RA

a data frame row containing, at least, columns for AGE, ROOMS, and FLOORS for the receptor-person.

SA

a data frame row containing, at least, columns for AGE, ROOMS, and FLOORS for the source-person.

This function calls sim.house to simulate the house layout and sim.volume to simulate the house volume. The function recodes the occupant time-activities in terms of the actual rooms that exist in the house, first determining the ``potential'' rooms that can be visited by applying the location codes specified in inputs$LOC. Garages, basements, laundries, and bathooms rooms (so-called ``supplementary'' rooms) are added onto the base house configuration that consists of main rooms and hallways. Main rooms are one, or one or more multi-use combinations, of the following room types:

• Kitchen (KIT)
• Dining Room (DIN)
• Living Room (LIV)
• Bedroom (BED)
• Auxiliary Room (AUX)

where AUX rooms are interpreted as spare bedrooms, offices, extra dens, or other types of general living areas.

The 18 binary scenario variables are as follows, where each description corresponds to the ``on'', or ``1'', condition, and ``0'' conditions mean the opposite, or as otherwise specified. A ``2'' signifies that the value of the variable will be randomly sampled to take on either a ``1'' or ``2'' value. Note that more 1's roughly equate to more pollution potentially getting to a receptor in different parts of the house other than where emissions are immediately occurring.

1. Smoking allowed in Kitchen/LivRm/DinRm
2. Smoking allowed in Master Bedroom
3. Smoking allowed in Auxiliary rooms (e.g., an extra bedroom)
4. Smoking allowed in Bathrooms and Laundry Rooms
5. Smoking allowed Basement or Garage
6. Smoking allowed during times when others are at home
7. Internal door open in rooms where & while smoking is occurring
8. Window closed in rooms where & while smoking is occurring
9. Internal door open in rooms where the nonsmoking receptor is present while smoking is ocurring in some other room.
10. Window closed in rooms where nonsmoking receptor is present while smoking is occurring in some other room
11. No exhaust ventilation in smoking rooms
12. No exhaust ventilation in nonsmoking rooms
13. Window/Door/Exhaust behavior in 7-12 are active only when a cigarette is being smoked, versus being active for the entire episode the smoker is in a particular room where he/she is allowed to smoke.
14. No recirculating filtration in rooms where smoking is allowed
15. No recirculating filtration in rooms where smoking isn't allowed
16. Central air system operates according to a specified duty cycle whenever either smoker or nonsmoker are awake
17. Force house to have a single floor and a single main room, where the house has the same volume as if there were the originally specified number of rooms and floors
18. Randomly close indoor doorways for the "base case" instead of assigning them all to be open. Doors will still be closed as per the scenario variables above where doors are closed in direct response to smoking activity.
19. Nonsmoker has precedence over smoker in rooms that they occupy simultaneously with respect to door and window position during smoking episodes.

The SCEN specification uniquely determines the time-dependent types of physical connection between rooms, the outdoors, and the HVAC system. These connections are determined by the sim.connections function, the output of which is fed directly into the sim.flows function, which simulates the time-dependent air flows between each pair of zones.

This function is not meant to be called directly, but called through the esm.MRD.input function, which is, in turn, intended to be called by the esm function.

Value

This function returns a list of instances with components:

Note

This function is intended to be of general use for simulating exposure in residences, although it and the other MRD functions are currently limited to consideration of tobacco smoke exposure from in-home cigarette smoking.

Author(s)

Neil Klepeis

See Also

Other input functions for the multi-room dwelling simulation model are esm.MRD.input.source; esm.MRD.input.receptor; and esm.MRD.input.conc.

Other functions used in the multi-room dwelling exposure simulation model are esm.MRD.expos and esm.MRD.output.

Distribution specifications are made using the distrib function.

The root function for executing an exposure simulation model is esm.