Building Performance Implications of Occupant Mobility

AbstractIn the ongoing effort to improve building performance predictions, a key question is whether it is important to consider variations of occupant distributions resulting from inter-zone occupant mobility inside a building. The objective of this research is to study the impact of various occupant distributions on building performance predictions using simulation. A generic office building in Toronto, Canada, was simulated under homogeneous and heterogeneous distributions of occupants using EnergyPlus. The simulation results showed that as occupant mobility inside a building led to varied occupants’ densities at the zone level, zone-level energy use and unmet hours are dependent on occupant mobility.