occupant behaviour

In order to know the thermal comfort of bedrooms, we have measured the air temperature and relative humidity in the 27 bedrooms of 11 houses. We have also conducted a thermal comfort survey, quality of sleep and occupant behaviour survey with the residents. Residents are highly satisfied with the thermal condition of the houses, using various thermal adjustments such as fans, clothing modifications, etc.

This paper describes an effort to build and partially validate an energy model of an existing educational building located in Cambridge, MA, USA. This work was carried out as part of a research seminar for graduate architecture/design students and included four related tasks: Modelling the building’s geometry and thermal properties in DesignBuilder/EnergyPlus, generating a site-specific weather file based on near-site measured data, assessing internal load schedules based on a detailed building survey, and collecting monthly metered data for heating lighting and cooling over a whole year.

While most current building simulation tools consider occupants as predictable robots the true nature of human behaviour is more complex. This article describes a set of stochastic models aimed at capturing this complexity by decoupling occupant presence from occupant behaviour, then considering separately each means of occupant interaction (use of appliances, of windows, of lighting, etc.) with the building and finally modeling each of these  appropriately.

This report provides information and advice to policy and decision makers, researchers, architects, designers, and manufacturers on (i) strategies for achieving a satisfactory balance between good indoor air quality (IAQ) and the rational use of energy, (ii) guidelines on the use of energy in buildings and IAQ currently available, (iii) significant trends in the building sector with implications for IAQ and energy use and (iv) current research concerns.

The web-based IEQ survey is a tool that helps assess how well a building is performing from the viewpoint of its occupants. It is useful to detect and solve problems, and to rate a building performance.The survey conducted in more than 70 buildings has been widely tested and refined.
Three case studies are presented, demonstrating the different possible applications of the survey : evaluation of the effectiveness of a technology, information of the guidelines for a new comfort standard, benchmarking facility performance.

This paper describes a study of the relationships between indoor environmental factors and individual work performance in a call center. The productivity benefits of ventilation rates appeared small, for the worker performance, only high temperature had a statistically significant negative impact on productivity. But it appears that the degree of understaffing and shift length have an impact on productivity too.

In this study the concept of ‘adaptive behaviour’ is extended to look at the effects of personal adjustments and regulator control changes provided in offices. It is evident from experience as described in the adaptive approach, that clothing can play an

Hybrid ventilation is one promising approach to reduce energy consumption in office buildings. On the one hand, a minimum air change rate is supplied to the rooms, even if the windows are closed. On the other hand, the energy demand for ventilation can be reduced if natural forces (wind and buoyancy driven air flow) are used to ventilate the building. The user behaviour has an important but often unknown influence on the thermal building performance and the indoor climate. Thus, an accurate user model should be used in designing hybrid ventilation.

This paper gives the results of a field study in Danish office spaces with displacement ventilation systems. Draught was identified as a serious problem. Half of the 227 occupants were not satisfied with indoor air quality. Occupants counteract draught discomfort in blocking air supply diffusers or asking the maintenance staff to increase the supply air temperature. So a very careful design for displacement ventilation is required in order to perform satisfactorily in practice.

The possible links between the prevalence of sick building syndrome (SBS) and personal. occupational and environmental factors were studied in a random sample of the population between the ages of 20 and 65 in three districts in middle Sweden. Those persons whose mother smoked or who were brought up in urban areas more commonly reported SBS symptoms. Other variables which were related to SBS symptoms were current urban residency, fresh paint, and preschool children in the home.