Tahmasebi, Farhang; (2016) Exploring the Effectiveness of Occupant Behaviour Models toward More Reliable Building Performance Simulation. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), Technische Universität Wien.

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Abstract

Given the impact of occupants' presence and control actions on indoor environment and the complex nature of such interactions, sophisticated models of occupants' presence and behavior are increasingly deployed to enhance the reliability of building performance simulations. However, use of occupancy-related models in building simulation efforts and their predictive performance in different contexts involves potentially detrimental uncertainties. To address this issue, the present study deploys long-term monitored data and a calibrated building simulation model to examine a number of existing and novel models of occupants’ presence, use of electrical equipment and operation of windows. The models are evaluated in view of their potential in predicting occupants’ behavior, as well as their effectiveness to enhance the reliability of building performance simulation efforts. Specifically, the results of the study suggest that to assess the occupancy and plug load distributions and peaks, and for the purpose of window operation prediction in the free-running season, the stochastic models could outperform the typical diversity profile and rule-based models. However, the superior performance of stochastic models does not necessarily translate into more accurate estimations of common building performance indicators such as annual and peak heating demands. Moreover, for simulation deployment scenarios such as predictive building systems control, which rely on short time-interval predictions, the non-stochastic models tend to provide more accurate results, as they use typical patterns of occupants’ presence and behavior. In general terms, this dissertation concludes that stochastic occupant behavior models can emulate the seemingly random character of occupant behavior and provide probabilistic distributions of performance indicators. However, these models can contribute to enhance building performance simulations, if they delineate their scope of application and address the diversity and social context associated with occupants’ control-oriented actions.

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