Representing Behaviour and Adaptation of Office Occupants in Building Simulation

During the warm summer of 2006 a comprehensive longitudinal field survey of the adaptive actions of occupants, their thermal satisfaction and the coincident environmental conditions was conducted in eight Swiss offices. Based on analysis of these results we have applied logistic regression techniques to predict the probability of occupants' actions to adapt both personal (clothing, activity and drinking) and environmental (windows, doors, fans and blinds) characteristics. We have also identified, for each type of control action, the increases in temperature at which comfort votes are reported. These "empirical adaptive increments" have also been defined for combinations of control action. In this paper we present the field survey methodology as well as the results relating to the above, which we discuss along with scope for further related work and for integration in dynamic building thermal simulation programs.