Federica Naspi

• MS
• Fellow at Marche Polytechnic University

Thermochromic (TC) glazing could provide a significant reduction of energy consumption in curtain wall buildings. However, each application requires a design tailored to building's specifications. This paper proposes a complete approach for designing TC glaze based on building energy simulation starting from the production of thin thermochromic lay...

Measuring and identifying human behaviours are key aspects to support the simulation processes that have a significant role in buildings’ (and cities’) design and management. In fact, layout assessments and control strategies are deeply influenced by the prediction of building performance. However, the missing inclusion of the human component withi...

Energy simulation software describe users' behaviours with static profiles, causing significant discrepancies between actual and predicted building performances. A User Behavioural Module (UBM) tool has been developed using a data-driven approach and coupled with the IESVE energy simulation software to stochastically reproduce users' behaviours. In...

In this study, a multidisciplinary approach has been adopted to observe and investigate window opening and closing behavior in two classrooms of a Hungarian school. Surveys and measurements have been used to identify environmental, contextual or habitual drivers of window use. For this purpose, 8-months long time-series datasets and qualitative tea...

Including the human component in simulation software is of primary importance to enhance the building’s design and management. In particular, the user-window interaction impacts significantly energy and comfort profiles. Through an environmental and behavioural monitoring, this research investigated windows’ opening and closing actions during the s...

The acquisition of people’s behaviours in buildings is extremely important for the evaluation and the improvement of the building performances, as well as for the development of behavioural predictive models. Both occupancy patterns and users’ interactions with devices influence the building energy use. Therefore, researchers adopted many technique...

Behavioural models are fundamental tools to predict users’ behaviours and evaluate buildings’ performance both during the design and operation phases. Occupancy patterns and human-building interaction have been forecasted according to several approaches, which lead to different levels of accuracy and reliability. Such models improve their usefulnes...

People modify the environment by both their adaptive actions and their own presence. Perturbations due to human activities can be studied using decomposition methods since the environmental variables trends can be interpreted as temporal series. This approach has been applied to several parameters, recorded during an experimental survey, and the re...

The energy-related attitude of occupants can cause big variations between real and predicted building energy consumptions. Such discrepancies have been found especially high in nZEBs and energy-efficient buildings. Considering that actual regulations impose the nZEB target and that in such optimised contexts users’ actions have a considerable impac...

Occupants’ behaviour in buildings has been recently recognised as one of the main aspects influencing the overall energy consumptions. The users’ decision-making process is a complex mechanism, affected by surrounding’s conditions, personal features and random events. However, people behaviour is usually underestimated since, in the simulation envi...

People behaviours have an undeniable influence both on building performance and on indoor environmental quality. To predict their actions and obtain accurate predictions, it is of primary importance the understanding of their decision-making process. This chapter offers an overview of the main factors that stimulate users’ behaviours. It firstly pr...

People adapt the indoor environment to restore their preferred comfort sensations intervening on building’s controls. Such adjustments have a great impact on the building performances, especially in the nZEB contexts. As a consequence, the investigation and understanding of human-building interaction patterns can help to bridge the gap between real...

The modelling of human behaviour is an important challenge for the building sector, as the actions of users have significant impacts on both energy consumption and comfort assessment. In the search for a comprehensive understanding of the behaviour of occupants, many researchers have directed their efforts towards determining typical patterns and d...

Occupants usually interact with windows to restore their thermal comfort but in spaces densely occupied, as in schools, windows also are fundamental to achieve good IAQ and avoid health hazards. Many researchers investigated the user-window interaction to identify recurring patterns but such surveys in schools are lacking. This paper investigates t...

Accurate predictions of human-building interactions are essential to decrease energy waste and improve indoor comfort. Although users’ dynamic behaviour has been recognised, most of simulation programs still work using deterministic rules. This paper investigates the effectiveness of both deterministic and stochastic models in reproducing window op...

The present paper illustrates the results of a literature review on occupants' behaviours, assessing the actions' drivers. There is no general agreement about the reasons people interact with building systems or the driving factors that trigger their decisions. Even if lot of researchers focus on this target, they usually analyse one or two actions...

Thermal comfort and indoor air quality in school classrooms are essential requirements to promote students’ productivity and reduce health symptoms. This paper presents the development of an automatic system for window openings, based on thermal comfort and indoor air quality correlations. The research was carried out in two adjacent classrooms. Th...

In free running buildings users restore their thermal comfort usually opening and closing windows. In school buildings the window use is also useful to achieve good IAQ and avoid health hazards among students and teachers. In last decades many surveys focused on this topic, in order to understand which environmental parameters are the main triggers...