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Assessing the impact of occupant behavior on residential building performance: A case study of window operation
KTH, School of Industrial Engineering and Management (ITM), Energy Technology, Applied Thermodynamics and Refrigeration.ORCID iD: 0009-0002-3546-8933
KTH, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Intelligent systems, Decision and Control Systems (Automatic Control).ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6367-6302
KTH, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Intelligent systems, Decision and Control Systems (Automatic Control).ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9940-5929
KTH, School of Industrial Engineering and Management (ITM), Energy Technology, Applied Thermodynamics and Refrigeration.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-2300-2581
2026 (English)In: Building and Environment, ISSN 0360-1323, E-ISSN 1873-684X, Vol. 297, article id 114552Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Occupant–building interactions significantly influence indoor environmental quality and energy use, yet they are still often represented in building energy simulation with simplified or schedule-based assumptions. This study quantifies how occupant-specific (heterogeneous) window-opening and window-closing behavior affects space heating energy use in a Swedish residential building under comparable conditions. Using four winters of monitored data from several single-occupant apartments, occupant-specific logistic regression models are developed for window opening and closing actions. It is shown that common drivers (e.g., indoor air quality and time of day) coexist with substantial inter-occupant differences. These models are then integrated into a closed-loop co-simulation (IDA ICE–MATLAB) with a calibrated building model to compare occupant profiles under identical boundary conditions and against a consistent closed-window reference case. Impacts are reported as a normalized heating energy increase relative to the closed-window case, providing a direct comparison across occupant profiles and different scenarios. The results show that window operation can lead to large and highly variable heating losses, with some occupant profiles increasing space heating energy use by up to threefold relative to the closed-window baseline. These findings demonstrate that representing inter-occupant heterogeneity is essential for reliable energy performance assessment and occupant-centric building control design.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Elsevier, 2026. Vol. 297, article id 114552
National Category
Building Technologies Control Engineering
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-379065DOI: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2026.114552ISI: 001735223300001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105034373706OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-379065DiVA, id: diva2:2051363
Projects
DOCENTHiSSx
Funder
Swedish Energy Agency, P2023-01513Knut and Alice Wallenberg FoundationSwedish Research Council, 2017-01078Digital Futures, KTH-RPROJ-0146472
Note

QC 20260408

Available from: 2026-04-08 Created: 2026-04-08 Last updated: 2026-04-16Bibliographically approved

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Farjadnia, MahsaFontan, AngelaJohansson, Karl H.Molinari, Marco

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Farjadnia, MahsaFontan, AngelaJohansson, Karl H.Molinari, Marco
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Applied Thermodynamics and RefrigerationDecision and Control Systems (Automatic Control)
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