Occupant adaptive behaviour: an effective method towards energy efficient buildings

Energy efficient buildings play an important role in achieving a sustainable society. Conventional methods achieving energy efficient buildings mainly focus on upgrading the physical properties of the building, such as increasing their thermal insulations, neglecting the occupants who are using the building. This study justifies the potential contribution of a new method, i.e. selecting offices for occupants with a consideration of their behavioural preferences and the building’s physical properties, to the building’s energy efficiency. Dynamic building performance simulation has been adopted for the justification, based on a case study building with a simple rectangular shape. The occupant window behavioural model was developed from field measured data in an office building and the up-to-date stochastic approach was used to predict the state of windows for the simulation. Simulation results clearly reflect that 1) building’s physical properties, such as window orientation, have impact on the thermal performance of the building; 2) occupant behaviour can also affect the thermal performance of the building; and 3) considering both occupant behavioural preference and building’s physical properties can promote building’s thermal performance, without requirement of changing occupant behaviour.