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research article

Simulation-aided occupant-centric building design: A critical review of tools, methods, and applications

Azar, Elie
•
O'Brien, William
•
Carlucci, Salvatore
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2020
Energy and Buildings

Occupants are active participants in their built environment, affecting its performance while simultaneously being affected by its design and indoor environmental conditions. With recent advances in computer modeling, simulation tools, and analysis techniques, topics such as human-building interactions and occupant behavior have gained significant interest in the literature given their premise of improving building design processes and operating strategies. In practice, the focus of occupant-centric literature has been mostly geared towards the latter (i.e., operation), leaving the implications on building design practices underexplored. This paper fills the gap by providing a critical review of existing studies applying computer-based modeling and simulation to guide occupant-centric building design. The reviewed papers are organized along four main themes, namely occupant-centric: (i) metrics of building performance, (ii) modeling and simulation approaches, (iii) design methods and applications, and (iv) supporting practices and mechanisms. Important barriers are identified for a more effective application of occupant-centric building design practices, including the limited consideration of metrics beyond energy efficiency (e.g., occupant well-being and space planning), the limited implementation and validation of the proposed methods, and the lack of integration of occupant behavior modeling in existing building performance simulation tools. Future research directions are discussed, covering large-scale international data collection efforts to move from generic assumptions about occupant behavior to specific/localized knowledge, improved metrics of measuring building performance, and improved industry practices, such as building codes, to promote an occupant-in-the-loop approach to the building design process.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1016/j.enbuild.2020.110292
Author(s)
Azar, Elie
O'Brien, William
Carlucci, Salvatore
Hong, Tianzhen
Sonta, Andrew  orcid-logo
Kim, Joyce
Andargie, Maedot S.
Abuimara, Tareq
El Asmar, Mounir
Jain, Rishee K.
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Date Issued

2020

Published in
Energy and Buildings
Volume

224

Article Number

110292

Subjects

Building design

•

Occupant-centric

•

Building performance simulation

•

Occupant behavior

•

Human-building interaction

•

Performance metrics

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

OTHER

EPFL units
ETHOS  
Available on Infoscience
November 14, 2022
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/192265
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