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Heat usage patterns, which are greatly affected by the users' behaviors, network performances, and control logic, are a crucial indicator of the effective and efficient management of district heating networks. The variations in the heat load can be daily or seasonal. The daily variations are primarily influenced by the customers' social behaviors, whereas the seasonal variations are mainly caused by the large temperature differences between the seasons over the year. Irregular heat load patterns can significantly raise costs due to pricey peak fuels and increased peak heat load capacities. The in-depth analyses of heat load profiles are regrettably quite rare and small-scale up until now. Therefore, this study offers a comprehensive investigation of a district heating network operation in order to exploit the major features of the heat usage patterns and discover the big factors that affect the heat load patterns. In addition, this study also provides detailed explanations of the features that can be considered the main drivers of the users' heat load demand. Finally, two primary daily heat usage patterns are extracted, which are exploited to efficiently train the prediction model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]