Mark Thomas Wesseling

Modelling diversity in building occupant behaviour: a novel statistical approach

We propose an advanced modelling framework to predict the scope and effects of behavioural diversity regarding building occupant actions on window openings, shading devices and lighting. We develop a statistical approach based on generalised linear mixed models to account for the longitudinal nature of observations on occupants, and to provide a coherent method to capture observed variability amongst occupant/room pairings through built-in probabilistic terms describing occupant diversity in a tractable manner within building energy simulation. The contribution of the proposed method is demonstrated using collected behavioural data from three long-term monitoring campaigns (an office building in Switzerland and residential units in Germany and Denmark).

Numerical robustness analysis of natural and mechanical smoke extraction systems for buildings

ABSTRACT Buildings’ smoke extraction systems are commonly designed according to guidelines and standards. This approach does not take all boundary conditions into account that may occur within the lifespan of a building. We introduce a novel approach for evaluating the robustness of smoke extraction systems that incorporates realistic boundary conditions by means of the Monte Carlo CFD simulation method. We use a large number of simulations with randomly generated boundary conditions and an evaluation criterion based on visibility range to assess the performance. Based on this novel approach, we compare a natural and a mechanical smoke extraction system. The simulation results show that the mean visibility range with the natural smoke extraction system is 1.3 times higher. However, the mechanical smoke extraction system works sufficiently at a wider range of boundary conditions within the first five minutes after the start of a fire, which is the crucial phase of an evacuation.