Engineering topics

De Simone, Marilena

Publications and source records attributed to De Simone, Marilena.

3 records

DOE OSTI2022

A Global Building Occupant Behavior Database

This 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.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2022

A guideline to document occupant behavior models for advanced building controls

The availability of computational power, and a wealth of data from sensors have boosted the development of model-based predictive control for smart and effective control of advanced buildings in the last decade. More recently occupant-behavior models have been developed for including people in the building control loops. However, while important objectives of scientific research are reproducibility and replicability of results, not all information is available from published documents. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to propose a guideline for a thorough and standardized occupant-behavior model documentation. For that purpose, the literature screening for the existing occupant behavior models in building control was conducted, and the occupant behavior modeling processes were studied to extract practices and gaps for each of the following phases: problem statement, data collection, and preprocessing, model development, model evaluation, and model implementation. Here, the literature screening pointed out that the current state-of-the-art on model documentation shows little unification, which poses a particular burden for the model application and replication in field studies. In addition to the standardized model documentation, this work presented a model-evaluation schema that enabled benchmarking of different models in field settings as well as the recommendations on how OB models are integrated with the building system.

Building control↗

DOE OSTI2021

Intersecting heuristic adaptive strategies, building design and energy saving intentions when facing discomfort environment: A cross-country analysis

Occupants' adaptive strategies play an important role in the energy consumption of office buildings. Previous research has mostly focused on the adaptive strategies triggered by occupants' indoor discomfort; however, it is crucial to understand if specific adaptive strategies are linked to occupants' energy-saving intentions. This study explores the relationships among employees’ heuristic decision-making in their first choice of adaptive strategies (technological solutions or personal adjustments) when facing extreme discomfort conditions, and their energy-saving intentions, then links these patterns with building design, workplace contextual factors, and demographics. A cross-sectional survey was collected among university employees from China, Brazil, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, and the US. Our results demonstrated that the accessibility to indoor environmental controls (IECs) and office type are the significant factors for adaptive strategies. There was a positive relationship between the number of IEC features and the percentage of employees choosing a technological solution. When feeling too hot, occupants in private offices are more likely to adopt a technological solution, whereas occupants in cubicles are more likely to choose a personal adjustment. Occupants with energy-saving intentions are less likely to choose thermostat adjustments or use portable devices as adaptive strategies than their counterparts. Lastly, the cluster analysis suggests females were more likely to use adaptive strategies for energy-saving purposes than males. The majority of occupants would turn on/off lighting to save energy. The study provides the contributions in the connection between the heuristic decision-making process and energy-saving intentions and recommendations on design strategies for building architects, engineers, and managers.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗