An investigation of thermal comfort adaptation behaviour in office buildings in the UK

Abstract

Around 40% of total energy consumption in the UK is consumed by creating comfortable indoor environment for occupants. Occupants' behaviour in terms of achieving thermal comfort could have a significant impact on a building's energy consumption. Therefore, understanding the interactions of occupants with their buildings would be essential to provide a thermal comfort environment that is less reliance on energy-intensive heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems, to meet energysaving and carbon emission targets. This paper presents the findings of a year-long field study conducted in non-air-conditioned office buildings in the UK. Occupants' adaptive responses in terms of technological and personal dimensions are dynamic processes which could vary with both indoor and outdoor thermal conditions. The adaptive behaviours of occupants in the surveyed building show substantial seasonal and daily variations. Our study shows that non-physical factors such as habit could influence the adaptive responses of occupants. However, occupants sometimes displayed inappropriate adaptive behaviour, which could lead to a misuse of energy. This paper attempts to illustrate how occupants would adapt and interact with their built environment and consequently contribute to development of a guide for future design/refurbishment of buildings and to develop energy management systems for a comfortable built environment.

Usability and Design of Personal Wearable and Portable Devices for Thermal Comfort in Shared Work Environments

“…Accordingly, participants expressed a preference for personal devices providing directed thermal output. This corresponds to the findings of a study on adaptation behaviour, which found that adjustments on a personal, local level, such as clothing are preferred by office workers over adjustments on a more global scale (Liu et al 2014). Aesthetic and physical properties of wearable devices gain particular relevance once they are perceived as accessories or garments and the boundary to clothing and fashion is crossed and are key to the adoption of wearables (Wei 2014).…”

The effect of real-time context-aware feedback on occupants’ heating behaviour and thermal adaptation

“…7 (Figure 11). This also demonstrates that thermal comfort is "a highly negotiable socio-cultural construct" [27] and that real-time feedback can prompt occupants' adaptive behaviour and reshape their notion of comfort. This process of redefining occupants' notion of comfort can contribute to lower building heating and cooling energy consumption.…”

“…[23]. Many recent studies [24][25][26][27] In particular, the literature highlights that occupants' perceived ability of environmental control is a key psychological variable in defining occupants' thermal expectations [21,[28][29][30][31]. High perceived levels of control have been found to positively influence both thermal satisfaction [28,32,33] and productivity [34].…”

Required temperature distribution based on clothing insulation and metabolic rate survey in Japan

“…In a naturally ventilated building, the temperature at which workers feel neutral can be predicted using the outdoor temperature because workers show environmentally adaptive behaviours such as clothing adjustments and the opening or closing of windows. 3 Liu et al 4 pointed out that occupants habitually make frequent personal adjustments for different environments, and their adaptive responses are thermally, socially and habitually conditioned. Geun et al 5 showed that the comfort temperature of occupants varies with season.…”