Towards Measuring the Impact of Personal Control on Energy Use through the Use of Immersive Virtual Environments

Abstract

-Recent studies have focused on increasing energy efficiency in commercial buildings through technological means (e.g., efficient HVAC systems, sensors and sensing systems). However, most studies underestimate the impact of occupants' behavioural choices. Lighting systems account for approximately a fifth of the total electricity consumption in the US; commercial buildings account for 71 percent of such consumption. This paper focuses on human behaviour related energy consumption by investigating the impact of personal control on lighting use in office environments. To effectively examine human energy consumption behaviour, alternative 3D design models of an office are created using an immersive virtual environment to visualize different lighting control features. Participants are brought into these immersive virtual environments by wearing Head-Mounted Displays and are asked to interact within these environments and perform a defined task. Participants were then allowed to control and change the room's lighting settings based on their preferences in order to perform their assigned task. Unique to our experimental design is the use of immersive virtual environments, enabling measurement and control of a series of design feature isolations and combinations. The work presents the impact of decisions made both during design and operation of buildings on occupants' energy related behaviour. The experiment demonstrated that when participants are provided with personal controls for the blinds and the artificial light, there is no significant difference in their preferences between natural and artificial lighting; however participants are significantly more likely to open the blinds remotely if they are only provided with a personal control for the blinds.

Immersive virtual environments versus physical built environments: A benchmarking study for building design and user-built environment explorations

“…IVEs have allowed researchers to study user-built environment interactions through a more effective approach by enabling more control over different variables, which are usually difficult or almost impossible to be controlled or manipulated in physical settings (e.g., spatial and geometric and tectonic design variations, as well as environmental variables). For example, in a pilot test, Heydarian et al [28] have used IVEs to evaluate the effects of different modes of lighting controls (remote controls for lighting vs. regular light switches) on enduser energy-consumption behavior. IVEs have also been used in emergency egress to measure the effects of static and dynamic signs in a case of an emergency in a building [16].…”

Virtual Environments for Design Research: Lessons Learned from use of Fully Immersive Virtual Reality in Interior Design Research

“…Two additional studies, also in healthcare contexts, used qualitative observation methods (Persson et al, 2014;Wahlström et al, 2010). Eleven studies (one in healthcare, seven in workplaces, and three in retail) used Likert scale survey questions to gather participant reactions, sometimes followed by open-ended questions about the variables of interest (Heydarian et al, 2014;Heydarian et al, 2016;Heydarian et al, 2017;Heydarian et al, 2015aHeydarian et al, , 2015bHeydarian et al, 2015;Higuera-Trujillo et al, 2017;Nordbo et al, 2015;Persson et al, 2014;Ung et al, 2018;Ventura et al, 2018). Other studies used a variety of quantitative measurements and scales to evaluate participants' behaviors (see the next section for further discussion).…”

“…Reported sample sizes differed significantly, ranging from two studies with fewer than 10 participants (Maftei & Harty, 2015;Maftei & Harty, 2016) to another with 120 participants (Heydarian, Carneiro, Gerber, & Becerik-Gerber, 2015b). Overall, the average sample size was 45: 10 for healthcare, 67 for the workplace, and 53 for retail design research.…”

“…Despite the smaller sample sizes, participants recruited for healthcare design research were more diverse, including doctors, nurses, clinicians, faculty members, and designers, among others. Workplace and retail design research mostly used convenience samples of students (e.g., Heydarian et al, 2015aHeydarian et al, , 2015b.…”

“…Healthcare spaces include patient rooms (Dunston et al, 2011;Maftei & Harty, 2015;Maftei & Harty, 2016;Tutt & Harty, 2013;Wahlström et al, 2010), operating rooms (Maftei & Harty, 2016;Wingler, Machry, et al, 2019), a children's emergency clinic (Persson et al, 2014), an emergency entrance from an ambulance parking area (Ventura et al, 2018), a reception area (Maftei & Harty, 2015), and a hospital cafeteria (Ventura et al, 2018). Workspaces include an unspecified commercial facility (Shiratuddin, Thabet, & Bowman, 2004), single-occupancy offices in a university setting (Heydarian et al, 2014;Heydarian et al, 2015aHeydarian et al, , 2015bHeydarian et al, 2015;Heydarian, Pantazis, Carneiro, Gerber, & Becerik-Gerber, 2016;Heydarian, Pantazis, Wang, Gerber, & Becerik-Gerber, 2017), and a multioccupancy office of 42 m 2 with seven workstations (Ozcelika & Becerik-Gerberb, 2018). Retail spaces included dining environments (Nordbo, Milne, Calvo, & Allman-Farinelli, 2015;Ung, Menozzia, Hartmann, & Siegrist, 2018), grocery stores (Higuera-Trujillo, Maldonado, & Millan, 2017;Siegrist et al, 2019), and a fashion accessory store (Park et al, 2018).…”