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Building occupancy is an important basic factor in building energy simulation but it is hard to represent due to its temporal and spatial stochastic nature. This paper presents a novel approach for building occupancy simulation based on the Markov chain. In this study, occupancy is handled as the straightforward result of occupant movement processes which occur among the spaces inside and outside a building. By using the Markov chain method to simulate this stochastic movement process, the model can generate the location for each occupant and the zone-level occupancy for the whole building. There is no explicit or implicit constraint to the number of occupants and the number of zones in the model while maintaining a simple and clear set of input parameters. From the case study of an office building, it can be seen that the model can produce realistic occupancy variations in the office building for a typical workday with key statistical properties of occupancy such as the time of morning arrival and night departure, lunch time, periods of intermediate walking-around, etc. Due to simplicity, accuracy and unrestraint, this model is sufficient and practical to simulate occupancy for building energy simulations and stochastic analysis of building heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems.

Publication history
Copyright
Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 27 April 2011
Revised: 26 May 2011
Accepted: 28 May 2011
Published: 04 December 2011
Issue date: June 2011

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011

Acknowledgements

This project is financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51008176), the Specialized Research Fund of the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (No. 20100002120014), and Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program (No. 2009THZ0).

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