Occupant behaviour motivations in the residential context – An investigation of variation patterns and seasonality effect

Abstract

The development of more energy efficient and smarter buildings must include the perspective of the occupants. The knowledge of occupant behaviour motivations is paramount for the design and implementation of intelligent control systems in buildings. This article presents a methodology to investigate the motivations for relevant actions in dwellings. It allows establishing their seasonality and the parameters that define them among other variation patterns. The methodology uses Spearman's correlation analysis to rank the candidate motivations for specific actions. Both continuous and categorical variables can be considered in the analysis, which allows taking into account a wide range of possible motivations. The methodology is demonstrated in a case study where the windows and the roller shutters opening in different rooms were monitored for one year. It was possible to establish the variation of the occupants' behaviour and depict motivations that had a seasonal pattern. The results highlight that the motivations for actions in a building system, performed by a specific set of occupants, can have significant variance depending on the room and environmental parameters. This dependence enables the determination of the seasonality effect. The obtained results also support the need to evaluate the motivations of occupants at a small scale (compartment scale). Following this strategy, a building management system (BMS) can adjust the operation of the dwelling to its occupants, and thus, achieve true building intelligence and optimisation of the energy efficiency.