A critical review on occupant behaviour modelling for building performance simulation of naturally ventilated school buildings and potential changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Occupant behaviour (OB) is one of the main causes of the energy performance gap between buildings’ performance prediction versus reality, since, due to its uncertainty and unpredictability, it is often oversimplified in the building performance simulation (BPS). Hence, previous studies developed OB models, mainly in the residential and office contexts, in order to predict and represent human behaviour in BPS. Yet, school buildings are different from other typologies due to contextual factors (e.g., occupants’ age, different daily timetables and group rules) and are in a unique position to promote energy efficiency for tomorrow’s citizens. Assessing OB in schools can lead to an improvement of the indoor environment, especially in naturally ventilated buildings, where window operation behaviour directly impacts on the air change rates and, consequently, on the indoor air quality. This study addresses the knowledge gap on OB modelling for naturally ventilated (NV) and mixed-mode (MM) school buildings. The reviewed papers were organized in three main themes, namely (i) OB models for BPS of NV and MM buildings, (ii) OB research studies in NV and MM school buildings and (iii) potential changes on OB in school buildings due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis focused on three phases of the OB modelling framework: data collection (pre-processing), model development (processing) and model implementation (post-processing). Important research gaps are identified, such as the reduced number of studies that cover the three phases of the modelling framework within the school buildings context and the need to better investigate the teachers’ behaviour and collective actions as important OB drivers in classrooms. Future research topics are also identified, such as which are the potential changes on actions’ drivers due to the COVID-19 pandemic in NV classrooms and to what extent they will be durable or ephemeral.