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Occupant behavior is a major contributing factor to building energy consumption. Large discrepancies might occur when occupants with diverse types in terms of behavior patterns reside in an identical building. Moreover, it is vital to derive several kinds of typical occupant behavior that represent the assemblage of occupants in a simplified way as the reference for building designers and energy policy makers. This paper presents a preliminary research on occupant behavior categorization through the building energy simulation, where some typical occupant air-conditioning behavior patterns use in Chengdu, China have been derived from a large-scale questionnaire survey based on the energy consumption levels. These typical occupant behavior patterns could be used as the context for an overview of building energy in a community, as well as the evaluation of building energy-saving technology where occupants are involved. Further efforts are required in the algorithm of dividing occupant behavior into typical patterns, the validation of the classification results, and the analysis of other behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, in building energy modeling (BEM) programs, occupant behavior (OB) inputs are deterministic and less indicative of real world scenarios, contributing to discrepancies between simulated and actual energy use in buildings. This paper presents a new OB modeling tool, with an occupant behavior functional mock-up unit (obFMU) that enables co-simulation with BEM programs implementing functional mock-up interface (FMI). The components detailed in the development of the obFMU include an overview of the DNAS (drivers-needs-actions-systems) ontology and the occupant behavior eXtensible Markup Language (obXML) schema, in addition to details on the creation of the obFMU that contains the co-simulation interface, the data model and solvers. To demonstrate functionality of the tool, three examples of occupant behaviors were simulated, including: (1) turning on and off lights, (2) opening and closing windows, and (3) turning on and off the air conditioners. The obFMU can be used via co-simulation with all building simulation programs that implement the FMI, thus users are not limited to a particular tool. Another advantage is the use of obXML schema to represent occupant behavior, standardize the description of occupant behavior enabling information exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a Human and Building Interaction Toolkit (HABIT) for simulating the thermally adaptive behaviors and comfort of office occupants alongside building energy consumption. The toolkit uses the Building Controls Virtual Test Bed (BCVTB) to co-simulate a field-tested, agent-based behavior model with an EnergyPlus medium office model. The usefulness of the toolkit is demonstrated through a series of zone and building-level case study simulations that examine the wisdom of pairing local heating and cooling options with strategic thermostat set point offsets, judging from the energy, Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ), and cost perspectives. Results generally suggest that trading efficient local heating/cooling options for whole space conditioning has both energy and comfort benefits, saving up to 28% of monthly HVAC energy while improving the acceptability of thermal conditions in a Philadelphia climate. Nevertheless, cost analysis shows that the fuel source of conserved energy must be considered – particularly in the case of personal heater use, which adds to electric plug loads and associated utility and CO 2 emissions cost penalties. Moreover, costs from even small changes in simulated occupant productivity tend to overwhelm energy costs, suggesting the need to improve the accuracy and precision of available productivity models across multiple seasons and climates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]