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Sustainable Cities and Society 5 (2012) 23–25
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Sustainable Cities and Society
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scs
Short communication
Post Occupancy Evaluation of buildings in a Zero Carbon City
T. Kansara∗, I. Ridley
Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, University College London, UK
article info
Keywords:
Masdar City
Abu Dhabi
Post Occupancy Evaluation
Sustainable City
abstract
This paper presents a methodology to monitor the performance of buildings in a Zero Carbon City from
the occupant perspective. Masdar City in Abu Dhabi is hailed as the World’s pioneering Zero Carbon
Zero Waste city. The initial phase of construction is complete and the first students have moved into
the residential quarters of the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MIST) in September 2010.
Although the study monitors both Carbon and Waste, this paper outlines a Post Occupancy Evaluation
(POE) to assess the resident’s satisfaction and building performance at MIST. The research focuses on the
role that user behaviour and satisfaction plays on energy efficiency. It is hoped that such an approach will
allow building performance to be normalized for user behaviour and to examine how best to commission,
explain and handover complex low energy developments to new residents. It is hoped that the residents’
reaction and adaptation to the first Zero Carbon Zero Waste city will provide valuable insights that can
be applied to future low energy developments.
© 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Masdar City
Masdar City is an initiative conceived in 2006 by the Abu Dhabi
Future Energy Company (ADFEC). This is a subsidiary of Mubadala
Property Holdings owned by the government.
The vision for Masdar is to follow the recommendation of the
Emirate’s economic development goals to secure a test-bed of
renewable energy and sustainable technologies. Since inception,
the Abu Dhabi – Urban Planning Council (UPC) has produced recom-
mendations for the local construction industry. Two key initiatives
are Estidama, the sustainability department at UPC and the Pearl
Rating System (PRS) to legislate future Low-Carbon build.
One of the many aspirations of Dr Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber – CEO
of the project is to create a sustainable community adopting an
environmentally friendly lifestyle aided by the application of tech-
nology in the built environment. The aims and aspirations can be
summarised by the following key benchmarks:
•Net zero Carbon emissions zone, and improved air quality inside
and outside buildings.
•80% Reduction in energy consumption from Abu Dhabi “Business
as Usual” baseline.
The aim of this research which forms the basis of a PhD study, is
to examine the role played by resident behaviour in achieving these
∗Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: tia.kansara.10@ucl.ac.uk,harsha.kansara@gmail.com
(T. Kansara), i.ridley@ucl.ac.uk (I. Ridley).
benchmarks, focussing on Phase 1a (MIST) within the Masdar City
development. MIST is an independent, research-driven graduate
institute developed with the ongoing support and cooperation of
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
This paper outlines a study of Post Occupancy Evaluation with a
view to monitoring energy. This assesses the residents’ satisfaction
with the building performance, comparing the results to the initial
benchmarks set for Masdar.
1.1. Post Occupancy Evaluation
POE is an “evaluation of buildings in a systematic and rigorous
manner after they have been built and occupied” (Preiser, 1995).
It is a system of analysis which monitors and measures the perfor-
mance of a building using data gathered from environmental, social
and energy monitoring. The method includes the use of surveys and
questionnaires as well as technical monitoring to understand the
reality of the buildings’ performance once occupied.
In September 2010 the UPC launched the Pearl Rating System
(PRS) where all buildings must adhere to the three-part process of
creating a more carbon-efficient build. The three key areas include:
Design; Construction; and Post Occupancy. This mandatory initia-
tive is the first in the Middle East run by government to educate
and bring awareness to all areas of the construction industry. The
PRS aims to introduce an assessment of buildings two years after
occupation. This is a timely and pioneering act by the Abu Dhabi
government to reduce their per capita energy consumption. Some
POE studies have been carried out in educational buildings in the
UAE (Gabr & Al-Sallal, 2003). A full POE of MIST will provide a
detailed data set for comparison with other regional developments.
2210-6707/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2012.05.010
Author's personal copy
24 T. Kansara, I. Ridley / Sustainable Cities and Society 5 (2012) 23–25
Fig. 1. Schematic of methodology.
How residents respond to socio-technical energy conservation
initiatives can help to deconstruct the original design assumptions
made by the designers. Stage M from The Royal Institute of British
Architects ‘Plan of Work’ (RIBA, 1973) mentions a need for archi-
tects to close the loop once a building is constructed: “For projects
to be sustainable, the operational and decommissioning phases
need to be separately identified and planned for by the client”. The
client holds the responsibility to maintain the building, which rests
on the client having suitable briefing with regards to the technology
and user satisfaction of the building.
Stakeholders of a construction project (Designers, Managers,
Government and Users) have a variety of methods to communicate
their intentions during the project. The following figure outlines
the feedback linkages between stakeholders and the proposed POE
methodology, leading to the application of lessons learned for
future developments (Fig. 1).
Typically, POE studies (Bordass & Leaman, 2005) have found that
“designers, builders and sometimes even procuring clients do not
engage closely with the performance of the buildings they have
created. Hence, low-level, chronic problems tend to persist, inno-
vations miss their targets, and true successes may be overlooked.”
1.2. Why POE at MIST?
At MIST the student residences and non-domestic buildings
(e.g., Labs and Facilities) aim to achieve very low energy consump-
tion. They are not, however, rated according to any of the regular
rating systems: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
(LEED) or Building Research Establishment Environmental Assess-
ment Method (BREEAM). ESTIDAMA was not established at the time
Masdar was conceived.
The success or failure of Masdar City will ultimately rest on
a wide variety of indicators: Technical, Economic, Ecological and
Social. The use of POE, particularly to systematically and accurately
provide hard evidence on the performance of the buildings and
the experiences of the occupants will play a valuable role in the
evaluation of Masdar City in comparison to other energy efficient
developments in the region.
The Masdar Case study poses a challenge to the built envi-
ronment research community, namely the development of a POE
strategy that is applicable and appropriate to a Zero Carbon
City, where wider ecological and sustainability issues need to be
addressed.
The key lessons learned from 40 years of POE, and sugges-
tions for the future direction of research in this area have been
recently summarised (Leaman, Stevenson, & Bordass, 2010). In a
recent review article of the use and development of POE in the
residential sector (Vale & Vale, 2010), it is argued that: “Post-
occupancy evaluation (POE) could have a significant role in the
lowering of environmental impacts, but the framing of domestic
POE must embrace a rating of the occupants’ behaviour. A key chal-
lenge is to provide indicators not only on technical performance
and usability, but also on user behaviours.” Suggested metrics and
indicators to be included within POE are: Resource use per per-
son; Waste production; Transport; Income; Home productivity;
and Community involvement. An example of POE study applied
to a residential development designed to be carbon neutral, is that
carried out at BedZed in the UK (Hodge & Haltrecht, 2009), which
examined performance of the Home, Food, Travel and Transport,
Shelter and Thermal Comfort, Goods and Services, Waste, Commu-
nity and Amenities.
POE studies repeatedly report on the importance of occupant
behaviour on the performance of low energy buildings. A study
of a university building (Browne & Frame, 1999), found that elec-
tricity consumption was 2.5 times higher than expected, with the
behaviour and education of the occupants being seen as an impor-
tant factor in this under performance, leading the authors of the
study to propose that “green buildings need green occupants”, In
the residential sector, a study of low energy dwellings in the UK
(Gill, Tierney, Pegg, & Allan, 2010), found that behaviour accounted
for 51%, 37%, and 11% of the variance in heat, electricity, and water
consumption, respectively, between dwellings. There is some evi-
dence (Deuble & de Dear, 2010) that “green occupants” who have a
predisposition towards environmental issues, will be more forgiv-
ing and tolerant attitude to the performance of a building.
These observations are particularly relevant to the use and
design of POE for MIST. The methodology to be developed at MIST
seeks to capture and investigate the role of occupant behaviour
on the performance of MIST buildings and their role in achieving
carbon and waste neutrality.
Author's personal copy
T. Kansara, I. Ridley / Sustainable Cities and Society 5 (2012) 23–25 25
2. Methodology
The following methodology is being developed for application
at MIST for the Zero Carbon aspect of the City, and aims to follow,
where possible, guidelines and standard methods developed for
the Building Performance Evaluation programme of the Technology
Strategy Board (TSB) (Stevenson, 2010). The study will be applied to
the 100 postgraduate student residents at MIST. The indicators used
at MIST include: Induction/Understanding; Satisfaction; Comfort;
Control; Energy Audit of home; Realisation of design intentions;
Resource use per person; and Waste production.
2.1. Occupant survey
The Occupant Survey to be used is The BUS Methodology Occupant
Survey. Building Use Studies developed the BUS Survey between
1985 and 2008. In 2008 ARUP adopted the BUS Survey and it is
now called the BUS Methodology. The methodology and philoso-
phy of BUS is described in the ARUP journal (Leaman, 2010). The
BUS questionnaire is based on the Probe questionnaire and has over
thirty years of experience behind it. The residents will be given the
questionnaire six months after occupation. An additional standard-
ised survey will be used to measure the health and wellbeing of
occupants. The Short Form SF-36v2, General Health Questionnaire
GHQ-12, Index of Health-Related Quality of Life, and EuroQuol5D
are integrated into a questionnaire to gage the level of health of
occupants.
2.2. Energy and environmental logging
The energy consumption of the MIST buildings is to be logged
and recorded by the BMS system. Additionally 250 portable data
loggers have been installed in MIST buildings to measure temper-
ature and relative humidity. A two-year monitoring period, which
includes a pilot project, is proposed to provide seasonal and resi-
dential variation. The first sample of students will graduate in 2011.
The next batch of students will move into MIST in September 2011.
Monitoring both intakes and their reactions to MIST as well as the
non-residential students will provide good grounds for compari-
son.
2.3. Interviews and walk through
Small groups of students will be interviewed whilst walking
through the City. This provides the prompt for their comments and
observations previously missed by the resident in the written BUS
survey. A review session held to verify comments and establish
priorities.
As well as the occupants a number of interviews and meetings
have taken place with the designers, facility managers and building
owners to identify the strategy for closing the performance gap.
2.4. Energy Demand Response
The POE survey will be complemented by an ongoing inde-
pendent MIST Demand Response (DR) research project. DR aims
to reduce occupants’ electricity usage in response to power grid
needs. The aim of the DR project is to implement and analyse
the effect of different incentive schemes and dynamic pricing
models on the load consumption behaviour of end users. The sur-
vey investigates the behaviour and attitude of MIST residents to
energy use.
3. Conclusion
A Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) to assess the resident’s sat-
isfaction and building performance at MIST, Masdar is underway.
The research focuses on the role that user behaviour and satis-
faction plays on energy efficiency. It is hoped that the residents’
reaction and adaptation to the first Zero Carbon Zero Waste city
will provide valuable insights that can be applied to future low
energy developments.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Masdar City and Masdar Institute of
Science and Technology for their support.
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