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W. O´Brien, H. Burak Gunay, F. Tahmasebi, A. Mahdavi:
"Guest Editorial Special issue on the fundamentals of occupant behaviour research";
Journal of Building Performance Simulation (invited), Special issue on the fundamentals of occupant behaviour research (2017).

It has been just six years since the Journal of Building Performance Simulation published a two-part special issue on
modelling occupants. The motivation then, like now, is to
improve the predictive power of simulation to support better
design, retrofit, and operations of buildings. We will
not elaborate here, as this background and motivation is
flushed out in virtually every published paper on occupant
modelling and simulation! In 2011, the guest editors of the special issue on occupant modelling noted that many areas required future research and development, with priorities of: developing
occupant models from time use survey data; coupling occupant activity models with behaviour and movement/presence; developing occupant models for broader contexts; and sharing model parameters.
Since 2011, there has been a flurry of activity
and formalized international collaboration. Most notably,
International Energy Agency Energy in Buildings and
Communities Annex 66 on "Definition and Simulation
of Occupant Behavior in Buildings" has brought together
over 100 experts from 16 countries to embark on a fouryear
research programme. Annex 66 has played an important
role in mixing engineers, architects, other designers,
and social scientists. Annex 66 was the impetus for the
current two-part special issue, for which the guest editors
are active contributors.
However, despite considerable advances made in the
research community, the state of building occupant modelling
and simulation research has barely penetrated practice
(and O´Brien, Gaetani et al. in the current SI examine
exactly this topic). Moreover, to paraphrase Aristotle, "the
more we know, the more we know we don´t know". Several
papers in the current SI concluded that major fundamental
questions remain unexplored. Given this circumstance,
we set out to focus the current SI on contemporary fundamental
contributions to the field of building occupant
modelling and simulation, while following a structure
that consists of three major stages of occupant research:
data collection, modelling, and simulation. The conceptual
structure of this two-part special issue is outlined in
Figure 1.

(no german abstract) It has been just six years since the Journal of Building Performance Simulation published a two-part special issue on
modelling occupants. The motivation then, like now, is to
improve the predictive power of simulation to support better
design, retrofit, and operations of buildings. We will
not elaborate here, as this background and motivation is
flushed out in virtually every published paper on occupant
modelling and simulation! In 2011, the guest editors of the special issue on occupant modelling noted that many areas required future research and development, with priorities of: developing
occupant models from time use survey data; coupling occupant activity models with behaviour and movement/presence; developing occupant models for broader contexts; and sharing model parameters.
Since 2011, there has been a flurry of activity
and formalized international collaboration. Most notably,
International Energy Agency Energy in Buildings and
Communities Annex 66 on "Definition and Simulation
of Occupant Behavior in Buildings" has brought together
over 100 experts from 16 countries to embark on a fouryear
research programme. Annex 66 has played an important
role in mixing engineers, architects, other designers,
and social scientists. Annex 66 was the impetus for the
current two-part special issue, for which the guest editors
are active contributors.
However, despite considerable advances made in the
research community, the state of building occupant modelling
and simulation research has barely penetrated practice
(and O´Brien, Gaetani et al. in the current SI examine
exactly this topic). Moreover, to paraphrase Aristotle, "the
more we know, the more we know we don´t know". Several
papers in the current SI concluded that major fundamental
questions remain unexplored. Given this circumstance,
we set out to focus the current SI on contemporary fundamental
contributions to the field of building occupant
modelling and simulation, while following a structure
that consists of three major stages of occupant research:
data collection, modelling, and simulation. The conceptual
structure of this two-part special issue is outlined in
Figure 1.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19401493.2017.1383025

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19401493.2017.1383025