Occupant-oriented indoor environment: An approach to create high performance indoor environment for all scenarios

A high-quality indoor environment is essential for ensuring occupant comfort and health. Conventional heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, which are designed under the most unfavorable conditions with lumped parameter approaches, often lead to energy waste. To address this problem, an occupant-oriented indoor environment-creation framework is presented. The system identifies occupant distribution and usage scenarios through an occupant positioning system. Based on the occupant distribution, the system switches air distribution patterns and adjusts air supply parameters to supply air to occupied zones efficiently. This perspective paper presents the key technologies involved and outlines future research directions in this field. The key technologies and the future roadmap are introduced. This perspective will help address research gaps and inspire ideas to create occupant-oriented environments for more healthy, comfortable, energy-saving, and low-carbon indoor environments.