Abstract
Building automation is concerned with closed- and open-loop control of building services such as heating, cooling, ventilation and air conditioning, lighting and shading. The ultimate goal is to reduce energy consumption while providing comfort for the occupants. However, ensuring human comfort is a complex affair. In case of dissatisfaction, users need to inform the building operators about apparently badly adjusted setpoints. Then, service units of the facility management have to manually analyze how to improve the situation. Due to the complex characteristics of human perception and derived feedback, this can become a troublesome and time-consuming task. This paper describes the main results of our investigations to improve occupant comfort in office buildings using environmental information monitored by a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) and human perception collected from a feedback tool. A joint information base aligned with static data from building information modeling integrates the information gathered. Reasoning on these data sources allows adjustments of the Building Automation System (BAS) to automatically enhance the tenant’s comfort or suggest necessary adjustments for facility managers. Communication between the different system components is handled via Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT). A real-world field study shows the potential of the developed approach, proves its feasibility, and demonstrates the functionality of the feedback tool.
Highlights
In the last few decades, there has been a growing interest in integrating building management into increasingly complex buildings, which is due to the rising performance requirements demanded by users and facility owners
The functionality and interaction design of the HumBAS Feedback Tool were satisfactory for the end user
We know that the evaluation was limited due to the COVID-19 situation and restrictions in this period, but it can be seen as a qualitative one to consider for the further improvement and development of the HumBAS Feedback Tool
Summary
In the last few decades, there has been a growing interest in integrating building management into increasingly complex buildings, which is due to the rising performance requirements demanded by users and facility owners. Research into closing this gap and providing a suitable set of rules is necessary This further requires an appropriate feedback tool and methods to enable processing and comparison of subjective user feedback and objective monitoring data as far as possible in an automated fashion. We are investigating an automatic integration of building occupant feedback and analyzing this feedback in combination with building monitoring data to improve occupant comfort and provide facility managers with information on possible re-configurations and ongoing building issues. As part of this process, a user feedback tool is designed and developed, an ontology for modeling all entities of a “Human perception and Building.
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