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This paper introduces a database of 34 field-measured building occupant behavior datasets collected from 15 countries and 39 institutions across 10 climatic zones covering various building types in both commercial and residential sectors. This is a comprehensive global database about building occupant behavior. The database includes occupancy patterns (i.e., presence and people count) and occupant behaviors (i.e., interactions with devices, equipment, and technical systems in buildings). Brick schema models were developed to represent sensor and room metadata information. The database is publicly available, and a website was created for the public to access, query, and download specific datasets or the whole database interactively. The database can help to advance the knowledge and understanding of realistic occupancy patterns and human-building interactions with building systems (e.g., light switching, set-point changes on thermostats, fans on/off, etc.) and envelopes (e.g., window opening/closing). With these more realistic inputs of occupants' schedules and their interactions with buildings and systems, building designers, energy modelers, and consultants can improve the accuracy of building energy simulation and building load forecasting.

In many existing high-rise multi-family buildings, a pressurized corridor ventilation system is used to meet outdoor air ventilation requirements. However, this system often has poor performance, leading to under- or over- ventilation in different parts of a building. This study examines three ventilation strategies including: the base case, which is a traditional pressurized corridor ventilation system, a direct-to-suite ducted ventilation system, and a suite-based HRV ventilation system. A building model was constructed in CONTAM using features of a typical post-war multi-family building in Toronto, Canada. All three strategies were simulated using CONTAM under both summer and winter conditions. The resulting outdoor airflow delivery rates to the suites and corridor pressure differentials were compared to assess the effectiveness of each strategy. The results show that the suite-based HRV strategy is able to provide adequate ventilation airflow to individual suites in both summer and winter. In the traditional pressurized corridor system and the direct-to-suite ducting system, the airflows delivered to the suites located at the top of the building are higher than those delivered to the suites located at the bottom of the building. This uneven airflow distribution is more pronounced in winter when stack effect impacts the ventilation system more significantly.

Connected thermostat data provide new opportunities to access heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) operation and indoor condition data in high-rise residential buildings. However, how well these thermostat data reflect actual conditions and operation is unclear and best-practices to leverage these data for energy use modelling are needed. Connected thermostat data from 54 suites in two high-rise residential buildings are used to investigate the accuracy of thermostatreported suite condition and HVAC runtime data and the relationship between suite-HVAC runtime and thermal energy demand. Next, data-driven approaches for forecasting suite HVAC runtime are explored. Two key challenges when using these data for energy modelling were identified. First, while a linear relationship between HVAC runtime and thermal energy demand was observed, there was significant variation in this relationship between suites. Second, the simple, data-driven regression methods tested were largely ineffective in accurately predicting suite-level HVAC runtime for hourly intervals (average error: 30%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing aims to provide society with comfortable, healthy living spaces and its built form ultimately shapes the built environment. Consequently, its design, operation, and interactions with infrastructure systems are a powerful determinant of environmental, economic, and social impacts. This paper highlights the importance of assessing housing built forms by answering ten critical research questions. Throughout this paper, we refer to housing built form as the physical properties (e.g., residential density, floor area ratio) of residential buildings and their interactions with adjoining properties (e.g., setback, shading). In Q1 and Q2, we summarize the planning policies that led to current built forms associated with housing and their sustainability impacts, with specific focus on North America and some countries in Australasia. Q3 describes the adverse sustainability impacts of detached single-family houses, while Q4 examines future economic, demographic, and climatic changes that will warrant rethinking housing built form. Q5 summarizes the methods to assess the environmental, economic, and social impacts of housing built form. In Q6 and Q7, we discuss various system boundaries and functional units that are considered for housing life cycle assessment. Q8 and Q9 describe the temporal uncertainty and contextual circumstances underlying housing projects that need to be considered in life cycle assessments. Lastly, Q10 provides a summary of future policy directions to promote housing with lower environmental impact. This paper supports decision-making around meeting housing targets without compromising the environment. • Ten relevant questions on housing built form considering planning policies and impact assessment tools are posed. • Housing built forms are determinant of environmental, economic, and social impacts. • Past, present, and future housing built forms are reviewed. • Life cycle assessment is a useful tool for analyzing the environmental impact housing built form. • Planning policies to support and increase competitiveness of low impact housing built form are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]