This document summarizes a presentation on occupancy and business modeling for building performance simulation. It discusses the need to incorporate more detailed occupancy models into building performance tools to more accurately predict energy usage and space utilization. Existing occupancy models are limited and do not fully account for individual behavior and how it relates to the business activities in the building. The presentation proposes developing integrated occupancy and business models that characterize individual occupant behavior and activities in the context of the overall business processes and organization housed in the building. This would allow occupancy simulation tools to better inform building performance analysis by linking user behavior and activities to building energy systems and space usage.

1. eCPPM 2012
eeBDM at ECPPM
3rd Workshop on eeBuildings Data
Models
(Energy Efficiency Vocabularies)
Session 2 - eeBEMS
Paper - Occupancy and Business Modelling
Presenter: Dr. Dimitrios Tzovaras
Dimos Ioannidis, BEng / Research Associate, djoannid@iti.gr
Dimitrios Tzovaras, PhD / Researcher Grade A, dimitrios.tzovaras@iti.gr
Centre for Research and Technology Hellas / Information
Technologies Institute (CERTH/ITI)
Christos Malavazos, PhD / IT Unit Director, c.malavazos@hypertech.gr
Hypertech S.A.
25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

2. Outline
 Introduction to Building Occupancy Modeling for Building
Performance Simulation and Analysis
 Activity Based and Behavioral Occupancy Models
 Business/Enterprise Models
 Combining Behavioral and Business Models
 Enriching BIM with occupancy models
 Utilization of Occupancy models in Building Performance
Simulation Tools
 Conclusions
eCPPM 2012 2 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

3. Motivation
 Building performance analysis highly depends on
occupants behavior
 Building Occupancy Analysis helps predicting space
utilization and energy usage with increased accuracy,
granularity and reliability
=> Existing BPS tools have to be enriched with data
models fully analyzing occupancy patterns as well as
individual occupant behavior in order to accurately
predict energy consumption and space utilization in
facilities under design
eCPPM 2012 3 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

4. Existing Approaches
Occupancy Predicted
Models Performance
(Input)
Building Performance Tools (BPS)
 Current building simulation tools assume average user profiles in
regard to working hours, climate preferences, which leads to:
– Rough Estimation of Future Building Internal Loads related to
occupancy
– Inability to track the correlation between predicted loads and
occupancy during building operations at the early design phase
– Difficulty in estimating the interrelation and optimal balance
between different performance factors (Energy, Business, Comfort)
eCPPM 2012 4 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

5. Existing Approaches (cont.)
Occupancy Predicted
Models Performance
(Input)
Building Performance Tools (BPS)
 No formalized models exist in simulating occupancy
combining Individual User Behavior and Enterprise
Modeling
=> Need for the delivery of holistic occupancy simulation
models that account for Individual Behavior Analysis fully
analyzing interaction with Building Elements (resources,
spaces) as well as underlying Business Activities
eCPPM 2012 5 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

6. Existing Occupancy Models
 Standard Occupancy used by BPS tools
– Daily work hour schedules (occupancy diversity profiles), equal
for all users not taking into account enterprise-related aspects of
the building under design
 Reinhart (Lightswitch), Bourgeois (SHOCC)
– Daily schedules, possible occupant breaks and time variance on
schedules
– Several behavior types with regard to light and HVAC control
and shading
 Page, Liao (Agent Based Approaches)
– Agent-based model for individual occupants
– Probabilistic graphical models that are used to effect agent
behavior and occupancy prediction
– Validation is needed on multi-room and multi-occupant cases
eCPPM 2012 6 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

7. Existing Occupancy Models
 Tabak (USSU)
– Detailed activity model of individuals based on
observation and interviews
– Group and solo activities performed by individuals
– Definition of skeleton and intermediate activities
performed by individuals
 Zimmermann
– Activity scheduling similar to USSU
– User interaction with building and control
=> Lack of models that fully characterize occupancy
behavior with the Enterprise/Organization that will be
housed in the facility/building under design
eCPPM 2012 7 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

8. Activity Based and Behavioral
Occupancy Models
 Objective :
– Definition of occupancy models (OM) that provide the
necessary information for analyzing occupancy
presence and movement at the early design stages
Building Model Elements (BIM)
Occupant Behavior
Presence & Movement Space Equip. Env. …
When
What Where Organization / Enterprise
Model (BPM)
Actor Business
Who Why Process
Assets
eCPPM 2012 8 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

9. Activity Based and Behavioral
Occupancy Models (II)
 Contextual analysis of user behavior
– Individuality (personas, preferences)
– Activity / Business Process (what and how)
– Location & Time (spatio-temporal analysis)
– Relations among users and interaction with BIM
model elements (equipment, resources, etc)
=> Enrich Occupancy Data models with information
related to the dynamic behavior of individuals fully
correlated to the Organizational aspects
eCPPM 2012 9 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

10. Activity Based and Behavioral
Occupancy Models (III)
 Incorporation of several domain models
to cope with BIM and BPM aspects
Occupancy & Business Data Modeling
User Behavioral
Organization Model
Enterprise
Model
Performance
User Activity Model
Simulation (space &
Building
Building Information energy use KPIs)
Model
eCPPM 2012 10 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

11. Activity Based and Behavioral
Occupancy Models (IV)
 Semantically enrich OM with information related to
activities performed during human presence in building
(User Behavior Models)
 Correlation of activities with the enterprise/organization
that will be “housed” in the building under design
(Business Process Models)
eCPPM 2012 11 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

12. Business/Enterprise Models
 Need for collaborative use and fusion of architectural
metadata (BIM) with critical business models (BPM) that
will:
– Allow the reliable analysis of occupant behavior
– Improve the construction products performance prediction in
terms of space effectiveness and energy use analysis.
Occupant
Behavior Analysis
Extraction of BPM
models Views for
Building Performance
Analysis
eCPPM 2012 12 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

13. Business/Enterprise Models (II)
 Definition of Enterprise Data Model that can be
used in Building Performance Tools
 Contains concepts such as actors, roles, units,
business processes/tasks, resources/equipment
as well as semantic relations among them
eCPPM 2012 13 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

14. Business/Enterprise Models (III)
 Ultimate goal to define at organization level those
business processes (BP) that are of particular
interest for analyzing the Building Performance
 Definition of Primary/Skeleton and Intermediate
activities performed at the organization level by:
– Each Occupant (BPM View)
– By Multiple Occupants (Group Activities)
– At a particular Building Area (BIM View) interacting with BIM
available elements depending on the building Level of Details
(LOD) (e.g. HVAC, lighting, Enterprise resources/equipment, etc
eCPPM 2012 14 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

15. Business/Enterprise Models (IV)
 Definition of primary business processes
(Skeleton Activities) from BPM data models
Business Process X
 Actors involved
 Sequence of
Activities performed
by Actors
 Occupants’
interactions with
Enterprise Resources
…
eCPPM 2012 15 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

16. Combining Behavioral and
Business Models
 The combined semantic model defines basic interactions
among the building (BIM), the enterprise (BPM) and
occupant’s domain models
 Denotes the locations (Space) that activities (Activity) can be
executed by the occupants (Actor) of the building under design
 Depending on the level of development, the data schema
allows for relating BIM components (equipment, lighting and
HVAC, etc) with activities and actors
=> Fully extendable data schema that can incorporate more
parameters for occupant behavior simulation (personas, schedulers)
and building performance analysis (space use metrics, energy
consumption indicators, …)
eCPPM 2012 16 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

17. Combining Behavioral and
Business Models (II)
 The semantic models can be used for Activity-based occupancy
and Control Behavior prediction
– Activity Prediction is driven by the Activity Scheduler
– Behavioral Occupancy Analysis is based on the current activity and the space
utilization in the time domain
– Control Predictor handles operations on BIM model status based on the available
information (occupancy, environmental conditions, equipment status, etc)
User Activity
Schedules
Occupancy Performance
Data related Analysis
Loads
Views Occupancy
Schedules
=> Several data views can be extracted from the model for later analysis
and use by different Building Performance Simulation tools
eCPPM 2012 17 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

18. Enriching BIM with occupancy
models
 The data schema (owl)
can be easily incorporated to
existing BIM models standards
 An xml schema has been
drafted that can extend gbXML
standard to cope with
Occupant Behavioral and
Business Modeling
Overview of the xml
eCPPM 2012 18 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

19. Enterprise Data Model view for BIM
extension
eCPPM 2012 19 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

20. Occupant Data model for BIM
extension
 Occupant (actorCls) instances are defined in
respect to an enterprise and their preferences
(enterprise schedules, individual preferences, etc)
eCPPM 2012 20 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

21. Use of data models in BPS tools
 Business Analysts may use
the data models to define
enterprise-specific
instantiations of the models
(BPM-view)
 D&Es may use the behavioral
occupancy models for user
activity simulation and
energy performance
analysis of design
alternatives (BIM)
 Nested approach for
occupancy prediction &
control, allowing interfacing
with existing BPS tools
eCPPM 2012 21 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

22. Conclusions
Contributions
 Definition of semantically enriched data models among two currently
disjoint worlds, BIM and BPM
 Human presence and behavior representation models
 Definition of Occupancy Anticipators, Schedulers and Control
Predictors for reliable User Behavior Analysis/Prediction
Impact
 Improve accuracy and reliability of building performance simulation
due to its occupancy
 Delivery of occupancy models that are granular enough to handle to
an extend the dynamic behavior of humans in building spaces
 Providing D&Es the ability to reconcile differences between the
energy analysis of “real” and “simulated” buildings by the fusion of
two worlds encapsulated by the BIM & BPM data models
eCPPM 2012 22 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

23. Next Steps
 Provision for performance models that cope
with building performance indicators (energy
consumption, enterprise-related indicators
including space effectiveness analysis)
 Integration of the data models to the Adapt4EE
Building Simulation Framework
=>Work presented has been carried out in
the context of Adapt4EE EC-funded project
W: www.adapt4ee.eu
eCPPM 2012 23 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland

24. Questions?
Dr. Dimitrios Tzovaras
Information Technologies Institute
Dimitrios.Tzovaras@iti.gr
Information
Technologies Institute
eCPPM 2012 24 25-27 July 2012 – Reykjavik, Iceland