Toward adaptive comfort management in office buildings using participatory sensing for end user driven control

Current building management systems (BMS) operate based on conservatively defined operational hours, maximum occupancy rates, and standardized occupant comfort set points. Despite the increasing building energy consumption rates, occupants are not usually satisfied with the indoor conditions in commercial buildings. This study proposes an intermediary communication platform, which enables occupants to communicate their preferences to the BMS. The objective is to facilitate the communication between humans and buildings toward adaptive end user comfort management and to compensate for high rate of discomfort in office buildings. The design process of the intermediary, as well as the participatory sensing approach for deploying it in a test bed is presented. The key element is the interpretation of occupants' preferences in the form of change in the HVAC system operations. The results are presented to investigate the correlation between sensed ambient conditions and the user preferences. The results show that although there is a weak to moderate correlation between ambient temperature, humidity, and occupants' preferences, the variation of correlation for different occupants is relatively high.