Associate Professor · NTU Civil Engineering
Ying-Chieh Chan
Department of Civil Engineering, National Taiwan University · Room 705, New Civil Engineering Building
Associate Professor · NTU Civil Engineering
Department of Civil Engineering, National Taiwan University · Room 705, New Civil Engineering Building
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at National Taiwan University, where I lead the Building Science Lab. My research focuses on the intersection of buildings, people, and environment — investigating how the built environment shapes occupant well-being and energy performance. I combine computational simulation, field measurement, and human-subject experiments to develop evidence-based design guidelines for sustainable, occupant-centered buildings. Current research areas include daylighting and automated shading control, window view quality, building thermal performance, indoor air quality, and urban microclimate.
Quantifying what makes a window view satisfying — nature content, VR experiments, and novel metrics including the View Clarity Index.
Read moreAutomated venetian blind and roller shade strategies that balance daylight availability, glare protection, and building energy use.
Read moreThermal load simulation, OTTV workflows, and the impact of weather forecast uncertainty on building energy predictions.
Read moreKitchen hood performance under varying ventilation configurations, combining simulation and field measurement.
Read moreSimulation of how building materials, ground cover, and urban vegetation affect outdoor thermal comfort and pedestrian-level conditions.
Read more+886-2-3366-4332
Room 705, New Civil Engineering Building, NTU
Visual Comfort
Access to daylight and nature views is a fundamental occupant need, yet it is rarely quantified with rigor. My group has developed computational and experimental methods to measure what makes a window view satisfying. Early work introduced the View Clarity Index (VCI) — a metric capturing how much a shade obscures a view (Building and Environment, 2015). Subsequent studies shifted focus to view content: how sky fraction, nature elements, and urban features affect occupant preference (2022). More recently, we have addressed dynamic views — traffic, pedestrians, changing weather — and their contextual impact on satisfaction (2025).
A key methodological contribution is the use of Virtual Reality as an experimental platform (2024, Leukos), allowing controlled manipulation of view content. We also developed a ray-casting workflow (2026) to extract true occupant-perspective views from fish-eye footage, enabling large-scale view analysis in real buildings. Parallel work examines how bird-collision prevention glazing patterns degrade view quality (2024).
Ray-casting workflow: rays are cast from the occupant's field of view through the window to determine the visible portion of the outdoor scene. (Ingabo & Chan, Building and Environment, 2026)
VR experimental setup for controlled window view studies with dynamic content. (Ingabo et al., Leukos, 2024)
Daylighting
My doctoral research at Purdue focused on the optical and thermal behavior of window shading systems. A foundational contribution was a hybrid ray-tracing and radiosity method for computing radiation transport through venetian blind slats (Solar Energy, 2012), enabling more accurate prediction of interior illuminance and solar gains.
Subsequent work developed automated control strategies for venetian blinds that simultaneously maximize daylight utilization and prevent discomfort glare (Solar Energy, 2013). This was extended to roller shades — including a systematic method for selecting shade openness factor and reflectance for glare protection (Energy and Buildings, 2015). More recently, the group studied multi-sectional facades (Solar Energy, 2020), daylight-redirecting window films paired with roller shades (Building and Environment, 2021), and the optimal placement of photosensors for daylight-linked lighting control systems (Building and Environment, 2023). The most recent work evaluates daylighting in early design stages across varied window layouts and room widths (Scientific Reports, 2025).
Five window layouts (square, rectangular, horizontal, vertical, window-wall) for three room widths (3 m, 6 m, 9 m) with varying Window-to-Wall Ratios. (Do, Dung & Chan, Scientific Reports, 2025)
Energy
Accurate prediction of building thermal loads is central to energy-efficient design. Our work has addressed two related challenges: (1) how shading control strategies affect the Overall Thermal Transfer Value (OTTV) of building envelopes under Taiwan's tropical-subtropical climate, and (2) how uncertainty in weather forecast inputs propagates into load prediction errors (Journal of Building Engineering, 2025).
At the urban scale, we developed sensitivity analyses for microclimate simulation parameters — systematically characterizing how building material properties, ground cover types, and tree configurations affect pedestrian thermal comfort and surface temperatures (Urban Climate, 2024). Earlier work (Purdue) examined absorbed solar gain distribution models in perimeter zones (ASHRAE Transactions, 2013) and methods to estimate detailed optical properties of window shades (Energy and Buildings, 2016).
Probability distributions of cooling demand uncertainty caused by biased forecasting errors in temperature, wind speed/direction, relative humidity, and solar irradiation. (Do, Ingabo, Phichetkunbodee, Shih & Chan, Journal of Building Engineering, 2025)
Indoor Air Quality
Cooking-generated pollutants pose significant health risks in residential and commercial kitchens. Our research investigates how kitchen hood design and ventilation opening configurations affect the effectiveness of pollutant removal after cooking events.
We combined field measurements with simulation to evaluate how exhaust flow rate, hood geometry, and the location and area of makeup-air openings (windows, doors) interact to determine capture efficiency. A 2024 study in Indoor Air examined the effects of window position and exhaust flow rate on hood performance. A follow-up (Journal of Building Engineering, 2025) provided more comprehensive guidance on ventilation opening strategies for improving post-cooking IAQ.
CFD simulation geometry: (a) kitchen hood dimensions, (b) floor plan, (c) mesh model, (d) 3D model with exhaust hood, heat source, and door/transom configurations. (Chen, Chang & Chan, Journal of Building Engineering, 2025)
Field measurement setup with sensor pole (50–200 cm heights), BOSCH BME680 temperature sensor and particle sensor for real-time IAQ monitoring.
Urban Microclimate
The thermal conditions experienced at street level are shaped by a complex interplay of building geometry, surface materials, ground cover, and urban vegetation. Our research uses microclimate simulation to understand and improve outdoor thermal comfort in urban settings — with a particular focus on campus and public space design in hot-humid climates.
A key contribution is a systematic sensitivity analysis of simulation input parameters (Urban Climate, 2024): we evaluated how building facade materials, ground surface types, and tree characteristics each affect pedestrian mean radiant temperature and outdoor thermal comfort indices. A companion study quantified the potential of trees to increase thermally comfortable hours in campus public spaces (Energy Reports, 2023).
Sensitivity analysis process overview: parameter categories (building wall, soil & ground, tree), case study designs, and microclimate evaluation metrics. (Le, Hip, Yang & Chan, Urban Climate, 2024)