skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


  • NSF Public Access
  • Search Results
  • What drives our behaviors in buildings? A review on occupant interactions with building systems from the lens of behavioral theories
Title: What drives our behaviors in buildings? A review on occupant interactions with building systems from the lens of behavioral theories
Occupant behavior has a significant impact on building systems’ operations and efficiency. As a result, several innovative approaches have been introduced to quantify the dynamics of occupants within indoor environments, such as interactions with different building systems and the impact of various feedback and interventions to reduce the building energy consumption. To achieve this, researchers have highlighted the importance of reducing energy consumption without impacting occupant comfort. As a result, there is an increasing body of research evaluating how different theories of behavior across a variety of disciplines can explain occupant interactions with building systems. Future progress in this area calls for an in-depth understanding of behavioral theories in explaining occupant interactions with different building systems. In this paper, we have used a structured literature review approach to investigate how different psychological, sociological, and economic theories have been applied to explain occupant interactions with heating and cooling (HVAC systems), opening windows and ventilation, lighting and shading, electronic appliances, domestic hot water, as well as energy conservation behaviors. Throughout the paper, we identify the most common theories and methodologies applied within the existing research, general findings related to how occupants interact with different building systems, as well as a number of identified gaps within the literature. Finally, we provide a discussion on directions for future research studies in this area under each building system.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1823325
PAR ID:
10189172
Author(s) / Creator(s):
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Building and environment
Volume:
179
ISSN:
0360-1323
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; et al (, Scientific Data)
    Abstract 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. 
    more » « less
  2. ; (, Energy and buildings)
    Integrating PV panels into building facades (BIPV) necessitates a comprehensive understanding of the PV system’s impact on building energy consumption within the site’s climate zone. Maximizing PV power output depends on factors such as location, climate type, and latitude. However, minimizing total electricity consumption, which includes cooling, heating, and lighting loads, is significantly influenced by the design of the PV system and the climate region. This study conducted a thorough evaluation of the impact of south-facing PV-integrated louvers on both PV power generation and building energy performance, as well as occupants’ visual comfort, across 17 ASHRAE climate regions in the U.S. The results indicated that south-facing PV-integrated louvers significantly reduced building energy consumption in climate zones 1 to 3, as well as 4B and 5B. Wider louvers with longer spacing (S-3 typology) were particularly effective in zones with moderate cooling needs (climate zone 4). However, in colder climates (6–8) with significant heating demands, roof-mounted systems provided a better balance between power generation and solar heat gain for the building. The PV-louver designs effectively reduced sunlight penetration and maintained illuminance levels within the desired range across most of the floor area. Conversely, roof typologies exhibited lower lighting loads but resulted in significantly high mean illuminance levels on the working surface, leading to disturbing glare for occupants across a large portion of the floor area. The findings of this research offer practical implications for architects, engineers, and policymakers seeking sustainable building solutions. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; ; ; (, BuildSys '22: Proceedings of the 9th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation)
    The key to optimal occupant comfort as well as resource utilization in a smart building is to provide personalized control over smart appliances. Additionally, with an exponentially growing Internet-of-Things (IoT), reducing the need of frequent user attention and effort involving building management to control and manage an enormous number of smart devices becomes inevitable. One crucial step to enable occupant-specific personalized spaces in smart buildings is accurate identification of different occupants. In this paper, we introduce SolarWalk to show that small and unobtrusive indoor photovoltaic harvesters can identify occupants in smart home scenarios. The key observations are that i) photovoltaics are commonly used as a power source for many indoor energy-harvesting devices, ii) a PV cell's output voltage is perturbed differently when different persons pass in close range, creating an unique signature voltage trace, and iii) the voltage pattern can also determine the person' walking direction. SolarWalk identifies occupants in a smart home by training a classifier with their shadow voltage traces. SolarWalk achieves an average accuracy of 88% to identify five occupants in a home and on average 77% accurate to determine whether someone entered or exited the room. SolarWalk enables an accurate occupant identification system that is non-invasive, ubiquitous, and does not require dedicated hardware and rigorous installation. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; ; ; ; (, IEEE)
    Smart buildings promise to adapt environmental conditions to the needs of occupants based on statistical analytics applied to various monitored data. While sensors for accurate monitoring of building parameters such as temperature, lighting, and air-quality abound, currently available occupancy sensors are limited to sensing of presence only, with limited accuracy. Doppler radar sensors have shown great promise for unobtrusive recognition and monitoring of occupant presence, count, activity, and cardiopulmonary vital signs. With such measures, a smart building can optimize operations not only for the most efficient use of energy and space, but also to create healthy and sustainable environments that support occupant wellness, comfort, and productivity. This paper presents an overview of Doppler radar occupancy sensors for smart building applications. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ; ; ; ; (, IEEE Internet of Things Journal)
    In this work, we present recEnergy, a recommender system for reducing energy consumption in commercial buildings with human-in-the-loop. We formulate the building energy optimization problem as a Markov Decision Process, show how deep reinforcement learning can be used to learn energy saving recommendations, and effectively engage occupants in energy-saving actions. is a recommender system that learns actions with high energy saving potential, actively distribute recommendations to occupants in a commercial building, and utilize feedback from the occupants to learn better energy saving recommendations. Over a four week user study, four different types of energy saving recommendations were trained and learned. improves building energy reduction from a baseline saving (passive-only strategy) of 19% to 26%. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email