International Workshop on Implications of Occupant Behavior for Building Design and Operation: Now and the Future

University Of Texas At San Antonio, San Antonio TX

Investigators

Abstract

1558853 P.I.: Dong, Bing This award is in partial support of the International Workshop on Implications of Occupant Behavior for Building Design and Operation: Now and the Future. This workshop will be held on April 2, 2016 at the University of Technology, Vienna, Austria. Occupancy behavior in buildings is becoming an important topic of research as building systems become more sophisticated and people spend more time in buildings, making occupancy behavior one of the leading influencers of energy consumption in buildings. Occupancy behavior refers to occupancy presence and numbers in spaces or a building, and human-building interactions, such as opening/closing windows, blinds, and turning on/off lighting, as well as occupant preferences, such as thermal and lighting comfort. The challenges to study occupancy behavior in buildings are: (a) occupancy behavior is stochastic and complex in nature; (b) privacy issues make data collection difficult; and (c) monitoring occupancy behavior relies on various sensors with relatively high costs. The changes of built environment caused by occupancy behavior also affect occupants physiologically and psychologically. To this date, potential energy savings from occupancy behavior based applications have been evaluated both by simulations and in field studies. However, most current studies are individual and case by case, without a systematic and scalable approach. In addition, existing building infrastructure impedes the development of occupancy behavior-based industry products and applications, which will be among the topics of discussion. The ultimate goal of occupancy behavior research is to improve building design and operation in a homogeneous way for next generation energy efficient buildings. The objective of this workshop is to identify the research gaps in existing occupancy behavior research including what the obstacles are and what is needed from both academic research and industry, and the identification of future research directions. The list of topics to be discussed includes: (1) Modeling and simulation of occupancy presence in buildings; (2) Human-building interactions (3) Occupancy behavior based applications in industry. This workshop is targeted to: (a) advance the general knowledge of building science, engineering and cyber-physical systems through round-table discussions; (b) advance the knowledge of methodological development in occupancy behavior research for built environment through panel presentations and intensive technical discussions; (c) provide a collaborative platform for mechanical, civil and computer engineering faculties and graduate students to exchange ideas; (d) provide future research directions and encourage more involvement of faculties and students to participate in those research; (e) provide insights on better building design and operation for future energy efficient buildings.