NSF Award
2415488
Traditional occupant behavior modeling has been studied at the building level, and it has become an important factor in the investigation of building energy consumption. However, studies modeling occupant behaviors at the urban scale are still limited while such behavior is becoming a key factor in urban building and system energy modeling and energy policy making. Recent work has revealed that urban big data can enable occupant behavior modeling at the urban scale – however, utilizing existing data sources and modeling methods in building science to model urban scale occupant behaviors has challenges. The challenges for studying occupancy behavior at an urban scale are: (a) urban scale occupant behavior is stochastic and complex in nature; (b) lack of occupant behavior data sets to understand spatial and temporal diversity among all different buildings with different functions and occupant behaviors; and (c) lack of an appropriate modeling approach to integrate social demographical and equity with urban scale occupant movement inside and outside buildings. In addition, climate changes such as more extreme heat or cold events and power outages also affect occupants physiologically and psychologically and thus change their behavior. Modeling human behavior has been studied in other domains such as traffic analysis, epidemiology, communication, disaster management, and marketing. The goal of this workshop is to bridge the data sources and methodology gap between building science and beyond through bringing people from the multiple disciplines of building science, social science, energy policy, communication, civil engineering, transportation, public health, and others. The anticipated impact is significant contribution to foundational knowledge for improving the quality of urban living and reducing energy consumption. <br/><br/>The goal of urban scale occupant behavior research is to transform urban scale energy modeling and simulation, resilient building design and operation under future climates, and energy policy. The objective of this workshop is to identify the research gaps in existing urban scale occupant behavior research including what the obstacles are and identification of future research directions. The list of topics to discussed at the workshop includes: (1) What are the modeling requirements of occupant behavior at a community level? (2) What data sources have been used in other domains that could potentially enhance modeling capabilities for current building science applications? (3) What are new modeling methods of occupant behavior at a community level? and (4) What are potential future research directions for building design, operation, and policies at a community level, with enhanced data sources and modeling methods from other domains? This workshop will: (a) advance general knowledge of building science, engineering, and modeling through round-table discussions; (b) advance knowledge of methodological development in urban scale occupant behavior research for built environment through panel presentations and intensive technical discussions; (c) provide a collaborative platform for engineers, social science, policy and public health faculty and graduate students to exchange ideas; (d) provide future research directions and encourage enhanced involvement of faculty and students to participate in relevant research; (e) provide insights on better community building design and operation under future climates.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
