Modeling and simulation of energy-related human-building interaction: A systematic review

Abstract

Building energy use is highly sensitive to its occupants' energy-related behavior, including their presence and interaction with different building systems. The modeling and simulation of energy-related human-building interaction play an essential role in predicting the actual energy use of a building's operation. The present study provides a systematic review of the existing literature focusing on energy-related human-building interaction modeling and simulation tools and techniques to determine the significant findings, current limitations, and future research directions in this area. The main contribution of this study is to provide a state-of-art framework of the inputs and outputs used for modeling and simulation of occupants' energy-use behavior. A list of 95 articles, containing journal papers and conference proceedings published in the last 15 years, is collected and analyzed based on various parameters such as modeling purpose, building type application, occupant-related parameters, occupant-related data source, occupant related data duration, modeling method and techniques, simulation and programming software, simulation time-step, and modeling and simulation output. In addition, a word mining analysis has been employed to generate a bibliographical map of the reviewed articles based on the most repetitive keywords and their connections. Finally, the most efficient and practical techniques in the modeling and simulation of energy-related human-building interaction and future research direction are presented.