Robustness of building design with respect to energy related occupant behaviour

Occupant behaviour is often the first reason for the discrepancy between designed and real total energy use in buildings. A possible solution to bridge this gap is designing buildings whose performances show little variations despite of alternating occupants' behaviour. The aim of this work was to investigate how occupants' behaviour varies according to the building envelope design: different input values have been chosen for three design features - thermal mass, transparency and solar shadings - in order to discover the most robust ones. The study is earned out through simulations on an office building in 3 weather climates and probabilistic models for window opening and use of shading, based on real occupants' behaviour, have been implemented. By testing the influence of building's design on occupants' behaviour, the present contribution highlights the importance of the robustness' evaluation of a building during the design phase in order to obtain more realistic energy predictions.