Investigation on typical occupant behavior in air-conditioned office buildings for South China’s Pearl River Delta

Abstract

The excessive simplification of occupant behavior is considered as the most important factor that affects the uncertainty of building performance simulation, thus affects the reliability and generalizability of simulation-based design and forecast. In this paper, occupant behavior in air-conditioned office buildings of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region was investigated and defined. Copies of 873 questionnaires about the occupant behavior in air-conditioned office buildings in the PRD region were collected to study the relationship between indoor environment quality and adaptive behaviors. Eight typical office occupant schedules were defined via K-means clustering method. A probability prediction model of cooling temperature set-point was established by using the Ordinal Logistic Regression method. According to the different control modes of air conditioning, window, blind and lighting equipment, four types of typical behavior patterns were proposed using the K-prototype clustering method, which could be developed into 20 typical occupant behavior styles of office buildings in the PRD region.