Implementation of a Preference Monitoring Application for office Building Occupants

Buildings should provide a level of comfort that is acceptable to majority of the occupants and enhance their health and productivity. When indoor environmental conditions are not as good as expected, occupants sometimes make adjustments. In order to capture and monitor occupant preferences and occupant behavior indoors, a feedback system- Preference Monitoring Application (PMA) was created. With the PMA, energy use behavior and occupant preference data are collected on a continuous basis while energy consumption and indoor environmental parameters are being monitored separately in a building. The PMA was developed by identifying the values that are important to building occupants and following recommendations from other indoor environmental quality surveys. It is a simple application that captures satisfaction with temperature, lighting, indoor air quality and other parameters that influence occupant comfort and behavior on a continuous basis by using human input. A comparison of the feedback from 10 occupants in an office building in Pennsylvania, USA and 14 occupants in an office building in Doha, Qatar over 7 months are presented in this paper. This can enable the use of actual data to develop occupant profiles to improve occupant satisfaction.