Building Performance Implications of Occupant Mobility

Abstract

Building Performance Implications of Occupant Mobility

Sara Gilani, Rhys Goldstein, Simon Breslav, Alex Tessier, William O’Brien

International Conference of the International Building Performance Simulation Association 2019

In 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.