Towards occupant-centric simulation-aided building design: a case study

ABSTRACT

This paper aims at illustrating the importance of occupant modelling for decision-making during the building design process. It identifies the energy implications of conventional ways of modelling occupants for the design of office buildings. Furthermore, it presents a step towards bridging the gap between the research efforts and conventional practices within the field of building performance simulation (BPS) aided design. The paper first describes occupant-related assumptions that were made during the design process of a case study office building, obtained via stakeholder interviews. Then, the impact of these assumptions on the design decisions is examined through a simulation-based investigation. The stakeholder interviews revealed that professionals from each design discipline made significantly different assumptions about occupants. The simulation results showed that assumptions about occupants and their behaviour impacted predicted energy savings of some design decisions by a factor of five or more.