The change in the actual use of buildings by its occupants is receiving more and more attention. Over the lifecycle of a building the occupants and therefore the demands towards the buildings often change a lot. To match these altering conditions, particularly in the context of the demand for energy efficiency, purely technical approaches usually cannot solve the problem on their own or are not financially viable. It is therefore essential to take the behaviour of the end user into account and ask the fundamental question: "How is it possible to influence people's behaviour towards a more pro-environmental outcome, and also in the long-term?" To approach this question we will present a model-driven approach for dynamically involving building occupants into the energy optimisation process. To do so we will further develop an integrated behavioural model based on established behavioural theories, having a closer look how motivational variables can be integrated into the process. This should lead to novel approaches for behaviour demand response, enabling additional demand shifting and shedding through targeted real-time engagement with energy prosumers.

Behaviour Demand Response (BDR) is an approach that enables the adaptation of operation of the district heating assets to dynamic market and capacity constraints by asking building occupants to participate and temporarily alter their demand profiles. In this paper we will present an explicit behavioural occupant model that considers motivational factors beyond financial incentives and that integrates with the district heating simulation model of the CIT Bishopstown campus, which has been used as a testbed for the E2District project. Both models have been calibrated to reflect the actual occupant population and energy consumption of the campus for the 2018/2019 heating period. This allows an accurate simulation-based assessment of potential energy savings through different dynamic behaviour demand response (BDR) triggers. We will show how a generic district simulation model can be integrated with the occupant behaviour model to quantify the potential additional energy savings that can be achieved through better demand-side management of the heating system.

ObjectivesTo determine the relationship between sustainable and healthy food shopping behavior comparing general motivation with the immediate intention to act.MethodWe conducted an online survey of 144 staff at the Cork Institute of Technology, Ireland, using a questionnaire based on the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Self-Determination Theory to compute the Behavioral Intention score and the Relative Autonomy Index in relation to healthy and sustainable grocery shopping.ResultsThe intention to shop healthy food was higher (p < 0.001, Cohen's d = 0.56) than the intention to shop in a sustainable way. A significant intention-action gap was observed for both healthy (p < 0.001, Cohen's d = 0.97) and sustainable grocery shopping (p < 0.001, Cohen's d = 1.78). While there was a significant correlation (p < 0.001) between the longer-term motivations to act in a healthy and sustainable way, this association was not significant (p = 0.16) for the more short-term Behavioral Intention scores.Conclusion and ImplicationsHealth was identified as a more important driver for dietary behavior compared to sustainability. While longer-term motivation shows a stronger correlation between healthy and sustainable grocery shopping, short-term intentions do not follow this pattern as strongly. A significant intention-action gap exists for both, which is stronger for sustainability than for health.

Behaviour Demand Response (BDR) is the process of communicating with the building occupants and integrating their behavioural flexibility into the energy value chain. In this paper we will present an integrated behavioural model based on well-established behavioural theories and show how it can be used to provide predictable flexibility to the production schedule optimisation. The proposed approach is two-fold: the model can be used to predict the expected behavioural flexibility of occupants as well as to generate optimal communication to trigger reliable BDR events. A system architecture will be presented showing how BDR can be integrated into simulation passed building/district operation.