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. 2022 Dec 7;16(3):483–497. doi: 10.1007/s12273-022-0950-8

Occupancy of rooms in urban residential buildings by users in cold areas of China

Qi Dong 1,2, Zikai Ma 1,2, Cheng Sun 1,2,✉
PMCID: PMC9734699  PMID: 36531524

Abstract

Occupancy is used to represent the movements and locations of users among various zones of buildings, and it is the basis of all other daily energy consumption behaviors. This study investigated eight families in cold areas of China based on occupancy measurements obtained in four main rooms, i.e., living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom. In particular, we analyzed the duration of user occupancy and hourly mean occupancy, and characterized their regular and random features. According to the results, we developed an event-based occupancy model using an inhomogeneous Markov chain, where the rooms were modeled and daily events were divided into three categories according to their randomness. We established a new method for conversion between event characteristic parameters and a transition probability matrix, as well as an overlap avoidance method for active events. The model was then validated using real data. The results showed that the model performed well in terms of two evaluation criteria. The model should improve the accuracy of simulations of occupancy.

Keywords: event, occupancy, urban residential building, simulation, cold areas of China

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52008129), the Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China (No. 2019M651289), and the National Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province (No. LH2020E051, No. GZ20210211).

Author contribution statement

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Qi Dong and Zikai Ma. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Zikai Ma and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. Cheng Sun guided and revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Footnotes

Declaration of competing interest

The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

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