Analysis on the driving factors and patterns of window opening and closing behaviour in French households

Abstract

Window operation plays a vital role in indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and building energy consumption while maintaining occupants’ expected IEQ levels. In recent years, the influencing factors of window opening/closing behaviour have been widely investigated and evaluated in residential buildings, aiming at simulating building energy performance in a realistic manner. However, due to the challenges in collecting and analysing occupancy-related data, previous research works emphasized more on indoor/outdoor parameters (e.g. temperature and CO2). Hence, the correlation between occupancy patterns with window behaviour in a household has not been well explored. The aim of this study is to analyse the patterns of window opening and closing behaviour in French households and identify respective driving factors. The analysis was based on the data collected from four apartments in a high-performance residential building located in Lyon, France. The dataset considered in this study includes indoor environment data, weather data and occupancy behaviour with one minute resolution. Both model-dependent and model-independent approaches were adopted to assess the relative importance of driving factors for window operation. The results obtained in this study will provide insights regarding different driving factors for window operation and its related impact on occupant behaviour model performance. The outcomes of this research work can be used as input variables of occupant behaviour models in order to improve the building energy simulation performance.