Review of Identification Methods for Indoor Pollutant Sources

Abstract Source identification has been a challenging research topic in the area of indoor air quality which is an inverse problem in physics and mathematics as the process is to find unknown causes from known consequences. This paper studied a large number of research results of predecessors, and grouped the indoor pollutant sources identification methods into direct methods, probability and statistics methods and optimization methods. Although the indoor pollution source identification method has made great progress, but is still under the experimental conditions, and the simulation process was greatly simplified. The future research on the inverse problem of indoor pollutants should be more connected with the actual situation. More comprehensive species of pollutants, more complex way that pollutants release, and greater variety of sources type should be carried on in research. In addition, the development of more advanced methods to improve the identification rate is the priority.