Assessment and modeling of changes in occupant presence and window opening behavior in offices: impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic

Predicting occupant presence and behavior is accepted as one of the most important parameters affecting energy consumption in buildings and is an active research area for over thirty years. Field studies are organized around methods based on experiment, modeling, simulation, comparison, and observation. This specialized research area aims to reduce the "building performance gap," which is defined as the discrepancy between the predicted and actual energy performance of a building, through energy performance simulation. Despite the fact that advances in simulation tools facilitated building energy performance estimations, simulation results based on deterministic/rule-based input and/or data are directly related to building performance gap. The lack of occupant behavior-based that address building performance gap with probabilistic approaches rather than rule-based (deterministic) control strategies is a significant emphasis in literature. Studies were often conducted in office buildings due to the ease of monitoring user behavior and presence. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it became essential to consider office work practices such as remote, part-time, rotational shift, which alter occupant presence and the related energy performance related occupant behavior in office spaces. Given the studies before 2020 adopted similar schedules for office work, it is necessary to re-discuss occupant models based on flexible timelines within the scope of occupant presence and window opening behavior. Therefore, an online survey study was conducted with faculty members in Turkey as part of the present thesis study, and changes in the presence/absence and window opening/closing behaviors in the office were determined before and during the pandemic. Behavior profiles for occupant presence and window opening were created using one of the probabilistic modeling methods, cluster analysis, on the data obtained via the survey and these profiles were compared in terms of behavior change before and after the pandemic. The findings obtained within the scope of the thesis study contribute to the literature by addressing unexpected changes in occupant presence and window opening behavior.