Finally getting your work on paper is only half the battle. Sure, having a published work is good to have on your resume, but having impactful work can make a career. Learn how to write research papers in a way that will garner citations, and get maximum mileage out of your work. This workshop touches upon the importance of selecting the best journal match for your work, how to maximize your article for hits from search engines and when to publish using open access. It also explains how to better understand writing about both methodology and research findings.

Avoid the pitfalls that plague many authors who submit papers to research journals. Learn how to write a compelling abstract, the importance of proper formatting and grammar, surviving the plagiarism cross-check and addressing reviewers' comments in a productive way.

An interdisciplinary and international survey is developed for systematic identification of environmental, cognitive and behavioral factors (and their interrelations) influencing control options in office buildings. This study is conducted through the development of questions directed at attitude, subjective norms, perceived control and other related concepts as organized in the Social Cognitive Theory and the Theory of Planned Behavior. The survey is distributed to 14 Universities among six countries in four continents (America, Asia, Europe, Australia). The questionnaire survey assesses office configuration type, thermal comfort, social norms, attitudes toward energy saving, demographics, etc.

This study presents a new method to summarize typical behavior patterns in residential buildings in China regarding air-conditioning use. A large-scale questionnaire survey was designed and conducted to get behavior patterns, which were then used in energy simulation. Based on the energy consumption, the behavior patterns were classified into categories and a typical pattern was extracted from each category. Finally, the typical behavior patterns were validated by the distribution testing of building energy consumption. These typical behavior patterns could be used to estimate the energy consumption with different composition of occupants and evaluate the energy saving potential of different technologies.

The issues of energy consumption and occupant behaviors should not be an individualistic focus, assuming that people will control their behaviors and make rational choices. These complex issues extend to organizations and other social contexts as well. This presentation presents the empirical findings regarding the social-psychological and demographic variables affecting energy saving behaviors in both commercial and residential settings. In addition, the influence of social-psychological factors on the U.S. residents’ public acceptance of smart meters and demand response programs is presented. Importantly, this presentation discusses several important social science theories in measuring energy saving behaviors and intentions.

Traditional energy simulation tools only consider fixed energy-related schedules and do not incorporate real time effects of occupants’ behavioral patterns in energy simulation. In this talk, an inter-disciplinary, Adaptive Building Simulation framework collecting actual building indoor environment data (through sensors) and human physiological and behavioral data (through wearable devices, polling apps, and surveys) and incorporate these data into a coupled and distributed software simulation system is presented. A case study performed using this framework measured occupants’ thermal comfort related actions and its effects on energy use in buildings and the results indicated energy savings by influencing the occupant behavior.

As households are being required to be more energy efficient over the years, the energy consumption for producing domestic hot water (DHW) is receiving increasing attention. Hence, the design of hot water systems is becoming more important for a holistic approach to energy conservation. Current sizing for these systems is often based on estimations that obey empirical rules. An inaccurate evaluation of the hot water demand could lead to a poor hot water system design that is either undersized or oversized. This either means an insufficient amount of hot water available to occupants or an overpriced system that never gets to be used at its optimal operational point. Therefore, it is crucial to properly evaluate the hot water demand when designing hot water systems for dwellings. This paper discusses a stochastic tool constructed to generate hot water demand profiles for residential buildings using a 10-minute resolution.

In the residential housing sector, a strong correlation exists between occupant behavior and space heating energy use. In particular, the occupancy scenario (e.g., daytime absence, morning presence, etc.) has a significant influence on residential heating load profiles, as well as on cumulative heating energy consumption. The share of households characterized by different occupancy scenarios is a crucial assumption in order to accurately model the residential building stock heating demand. The choice of the most suitable occupancy model is a trade-off between complexity, accuracy and computational effort, as well as model integration at large scale. This paper analyzes the combined influence of different occupancy assumptions and different occupancy models on the housing heating loads for a UK building stock sample.

Occupancy information is important to building facility managers in terms of predictive control, safety, as well as the indoor environment quality. Previous works have addressed different occupancy counting and estimation solutions in different buildings or spaces. In this paper, we build up a test bed using the existing University lecture theatres to develop and compare four different occupancy counting methodologies. The paper addresses the occupancy counting challenge in educational building deployment scenario with large groups of people entering and leaving. Experiments have been conducted for three months with every 5 minutes data reporting interval. The results will be compared with the ground truth of real time pictures.

Accurate occupancy information is crucial to the demand response HVAC control. However, traditional passive infrared (PIR) occupancy sensors can only provide binary results of occupant presence without detecting the number of people in a room. In this paper, a low-cost bi-directional people counter was developed to determine the occupant number in a single entry room by detecting people entering or leaving the room. The developed people counter was designed to be installed in the doorway with a capability of recording the time and the number of people entering, leaving, and staying in the room separately. A field evaluation of the developed people counter was conducted in a single entry student lounge in a period of two weeks.

Radiant slab systems have the potential to achieve significant energy savings. However, when applied in the ceiling, the exposed concrete may create acoustical challenges due to the high reflectivity of the hard surface. The purpose of this study is to conduct laboratory experiments for an office with varying coverage of free-hanging acoustic clouds and fans. Different fans configuration were tested against a reference case with no air movement. The tests conducted showed that the cooling capacity decreases as acoustical coverage increases. Adding fans brought an increase of the cooling capacity of 22-26% depending on fan configuration and acoustical coverage.

As part of this study, the effects of horizontal and vertical free hanging sound absorbers on the cooling performance of TABS and on the occupants thermal comfort were measured in a full-scale TABS laboratory environment. The investigations have also been supported with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations to study the nature of the heat exchange between the TABS and the room when the sound absorbers are present.

This presentation explains a new method for designing radiant floor cooling systems that accounts for the effects of direct solar radiation.

This presentation compares the differences in cooling loads between high and low thermal mass radiant systems and all-air systems.