Past and Future Trends on the Effects of Occupant Behaviour on Building Energy Consumption

Abstract

In recent decades, the need for an accurate evaluation of energy use in buildings has become increasingly growing due to the rise in environmental awareness and political pressure around the world. The estimation of energy consumption is, therefore, a crucial criterion during building early-stage design. This paper investigates the recent trends and achievements in modelling occupant behaviour in energy simulation studies and aims to highlight achievements and research gaps in the domain. This study presents a state-of-the-art theoretical review of the research background through published papers in leading journals within this research domain. The main goals of this study lay in the two layers of determining recent research trends and crucial findings in the subject of occupants' behaviour and energy consumption, and more importantly, to identify research gaps for future studies. This research review highlights several areas for future research including studying behaviour in different countries considering various climate, cultures and comfort preferences affecting energy-driven behaviour and conducting similar studies in different building typologies and occupancies. Moreover, based on the reviewed article, it is clear that evaluating occupant behaviour as an independent variable on a larger scale energy analysis in urban studies needs to be addressed in future studies. The authors found a lack of comprehensive approaches to comfort and considering all forms of comfort while studying behaviour and consumption in recent studies. It is recommended that further investigation of behaviour and total energy consumption regarding occupant real comfort conditions be conducted.