• Energy Research

It is not evident that practitioners have kept pace with latest research developments in building occupant behaviour modelling; nor are the attitudes of practitioners regarding occupant behaviour modelling well understood. In order to guide research and development efforts, researchers, policy-makers, and software developers require a better understanding of current practice and acceptance of occupant modelling. This paper provides results, analysis, and discussion of the results of a 36-question international survey on current occupant modelling practice and attitudes in building performance simulation. In total, 274 valid responses were collected from BPS users (practitioners, educators, and researchers) from 37 countries. The results indicate that most assumptions made about occupants vary widely and are considerably simpler than what has been observed in reality. Most participants cited lack of time or understanding as their primary reason for not delving deeply into occupant modelling, but responded that they are receptive to further training.

AbstractThis paper introduces a database of 34 field-measured building occupant behavior datasets collected from 15 countries and 39 institutions across 10 climatic zones covering various building types in both commercial and residential sectors. This is a comprehensive global database about building occupant behavior. The database includes occupancy patterns (i.e., presence and people count) and occupant behaviors (i.e., interactions with devices, equipment, and technical systems in buildings). Brick schema models were developed to represent sensor and room metadata information. The database is publicly available, and a website was created for the public to access, query, and download specific datasets or the whole database interactively. The database can help to advance the knowledge and understanding of realistic occupancy patterns and human-building interactions with building systems (e.g., light switching, set-point changes on thermostats, fans on/off, etc.) and envelopes (e.g., window opening/closing). With these more realistic inputs of occupants’ schedules and their interactions with buildings and systems, building designers, energy modelers, and consultants can improve the accuracy of building energy simulation and building load forecasting.

Abstract In the last four decades several methods have been used to model occupants' presence and actions (OPA) in buildings according to different purposes, available computational power, and technical solutions. This study reviews approaches, methods and key findings related to OPA modeling in buildings. An extensive database of related research documents is systematically constructed, and, using bibliometric analysis techniques, the scientific production and landscape are described. The initial literature screening identified more than 750 studies, out of which 278 publications were selected. They provide an overarching view of the development of OPA modeling methods. The research field has evolved from longitudinal collaborative efforts since the late 1970s and, so far, covers diverse building typologies mostly concentrated in a few climate zones. The modeling approaches in the selected literature are grouped into three categories (rule-based models, stochastic OPA modeling, and data-driven methods) for modeling occupancy-related target functions and a set of occupants’ actions (window, solar shading, electric lighting, thermostat adjustment, clothing adjustment and appliance use). The explanatory modeling is conventionally based on the model-based paradigm where occupant behavior is assumed to be stochastic, while the data-driven paradigm has found wide applications for the predictive modeling of OPA, applicable to control systems. The lack of established standard evaluation protocols was identified as a scientifically important yet rarely addressed research question. In addition, machine learning and deep learning are emerging in recent years as promising methods to address OPA modeling in real-world applications.

AbstractThe Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (EMME) region hosts some of the world’s most influential and troubled cities. It is also a hotspot of climate change and socio-economic and political turbulence, which inflate the already flammable conditions and reinforce existing local vulnerabilities. Some of the most arduous challenges of cities relate to the built environment – although vital for human well-being, buildings rarely offer both sufficient and affordable shelter to their inhabitants. With energy performance regulations coming into effect during the past three decades, a considerable proportion of the worldwide building stock had already been constructed and is now ageing and inefficient. Harmonising the energy performance of buildings at a sufficient level requires common objectives and priorities, and the EMME region consists of nations with different governance and regulations. Scarce literature exists on the existing operational frameworks, and this study aims to offer an overview of the built environment policy scene in the EMME region, identifying gaps, good practices and prospects. The study draws from scholarly literature, national and international regulations and other document sources, as well as local experts. This work finds that although most EMME countries participate in and embrace international agreements, they act individually and not collectively, confirming our hypothesis that the policy agenda reflects the diverse characteristics of the region. By recognising standing failings and strengths, moving forward becomes a possibility through the adoption of integrated governance, common policy agendas and financing mechanisms to create sustainable urban centres inhabited by resilient and equitable communities.

In the actual era of smart homes and smart grids, advanced technological systems that allow the automation of domestic tasks are developing rapidly. There are numerous technologies and applications that can be installed in smart homes today. They enable communication between home appliances and users, and enhance home appliances’ automation, monitoring and remote control capabilities. This review article, by introducing the concept of the smart home and the advent of the smart grid, investigates technologies for smart homes. The technical descriptions of the systems are presented and point out advantages and disadvantages of each technology and product today available on the market. Barriers, challenges, benefits and future trends regarding the technologies and the role of users have also been discussed.

The massive urbanization process registered since 1950s and projected to continue for the coming decades is posing a crucial issue for the management of existing cities and the planning of future ones. Smart cities are often envisioned as ideal urban environments where the different dimensions of a city, such as economy, education, energy, environment, finance, etc., are managed in an effective and proactive way. Nevertheless, in order to reach this remarkable and challenging objective, analysis tools are required to create scenarios that are able to inform policy makers’ decisions. Focusing on energy, this paper proposes an analysis method, based on exergy, to support smart city planning. It may help the decision makers to assess the energy-smartness of different scenarios, and to address urban energy policies. Possibilities and limitations of the analysis method are discussed via the application to the cities of London, Milan, and Lisbon that committed to become smart cities. Practical application: The paper summarizes a study on the possibilities and limitations of adopting an assessment technique, based on exergy, in order to evaluate the energy-smartness of policies in existing and future smart cities. As highlighted in the paper, building’s energy uses have a huge share of many cities’ energy breakdown. Thus, professionals in the building industry will be interested in the paper not only because it refers to smart cities, but because the built environment plays a pivotal role in them. Professionals may also refer to this study to perform a similar analysis in other urban environments to support decision makers.