Effect of Occupant Behavior on Thermal Comfort in EMU Student Accommodation Units: Kamacioglu and Prime Living Dormitories

The climate change and the subject of energy efficiency to overcome the man-made harms to our environment are of very important issues today. The building sector and especially the accommodation sector by using energy and their inefficiency in doing so contribute a lot to the existing problem. Many strategies and methods can be applied to reduce the energy consumption rate in buildings and houses but first the main factors and energy consuming elements in a building must be underlined. Among these buildings, dormitories are between the important ones as they accommodate certain range of occupants in terms of age and activity and also their occupational pattern. On the other hand, in the existing studies the importance of student accommodations are overlooked. This study tries to identify some major factors in the energy consumption of a building, by literature review of the latest publications, and then investigating them in a field study which in this study are Kamacıoğlu dormitory and Prime Living dormitory in EMU campus, finally in the analysis of the results the main weak points of the field study in terms of physical and occupant characteristics are shown and some suggestions are given to the existing problems. Keywords: Energy Crisis, Climate change, Energy efficiency, Occupant behavior, Dormitories