ABSTRACT
The concept of standardisation is as old as human history with examples like currency systems, units of measurement and languages being documented and specified. In the USA, research involving thermal comfort began in the 1930s when the John B. Pierce Laboratory was established. In the 1950s, HVAC (Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning) engineers, researching in collaboration and under the auspices of the ASHRAE (American Society for Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineering), did a number of experimental studies on thermal comfort and thermal environments. The first-ever published standard on thermal comfort was released in 1966, called the ASHRAE 55: The Conditions for Thermal Comfort. European scientists began studying thermal comfort 20 later when Powl Ole Fanger published his book on thermal comfort. Finally, in the 1980s, the ISO formed the working group called the ISO TC 159 SC5 WG1 Ergonomics of the Thermal Environment. Most of the relevant ISO standards for assessing thermal comfort are part of the larger field of the ergonomics, more precisely the field called the ergonomics of the thermal environment. Those standards, concerning the effects of moderate, hot and cold environments on human thermal comfort, are used separately or in a complimentary way. Existing standards provide the methods to evaluate the general thermal state of the human body interacting with his clothing and the environment, in a comfort state or placed in the state of hot or cold stress.
