Modelling Building Users’ Space Preferences for Group Work: A Discrete-Choice Experiment

Accurate space-use prediction helps architects to optimise space efficiency in buildings, thereby achieving economic and environmental sustainability. However, current space-use prediction models and approaches either disregard or oversimplify the role of building users’ space preferences in spatial-choice behaviour, thereby compromising prediction accuracy. The aim of this study was thus to develop a space-preference model of spatial choice behaviour with a focus on group work-related activities. A total of 2,464 observations of spatial choices were collected using a discrete-choice experiment. The data were modelled using a conditional logit model and then validated in a predictive success test. The resulting model clearly explains space preferences for group work-related activities and predicts spatial-choice behaviour by generating space-use probabilities for given spaces. The model is compared to a space preference model for individual work-related activities. Lastly, the application of the model was demonstrated in a case example.This work was supported by Hong Kong Polytechnic University: [grant number 1-ZE5H]

THE STANCE LOGISTICS: An Attempt to Adapt Logistics Principles on Human and Inter-human Movement Behaviors

The broad span of Logistics Management encompasses control of time, place, movement, energy (efforts, labor), as well as the positioning, stance and movement of products, materials, commodities, and people. This study coins the term Stance Logistics to focus on the stance and movement of people within the range of Logistics principles. The philosophy behind this is to enhance the required sensitivity with respect to management and control of time, place, movement, motion, stance and energy in material and nonmaterial exchanges and in all types of human encounters. Stance Logistics includes not only the “on foot” (pedestrian) or “in-vehicle” (automated) movements and public behaviour in stopping, standing, and positioning, but also individual predisposition of physical and mental response, and awareness (aesthesia). This essay describes the application of the scientific principles of Logistics to the personal experiences of people. Current Logistics literature includes mostly models developed on pedestrian and evacuation movement behaviour. To the author’s knowledge, however, there is nothing documented on the issue of personal individual Logistics Stance. Behaviours, especially that of blocking other people’s ways and passages, intervening, rudeness and queue-jumping in various environmental settings have not been extensively studied, if at all, whether during walking, pausing, stopping, face-to-face encounters, standing or waiting in lines and lanes or waiting for an elevator or metro train door to open. This study seeks underlying clues to increase sensitivity and awareness of people’s movement particularly in public areas by shedding light on Logistics behaviours of people. When combined with applicable models of pedestrian movements and integrated with the general principles of Logistics, Stance Logistics can serve as an important guide to facilitate the daily activities of many people. It is believed that, this exploratory study will pave the way for further research to produce promising results on the aspects of this new concept of Stance Logistic

Li-BIM, an agent-based approach to simulate occupant-building interaction from the Building-Information Modelling

International audienceBuilding design involves many challenges and requires to take into account the interaction between the building and the users. Different occupant behaviour models implemented with building simulation tools (thermal, air quality, lighting) have been proposed. Among these, models based on the agent approach seem to be the most promising. However, existing models poorly describe human cognition and the social dimension. Moreover, they are often oriented towards a specific use (thermal simulation, waste management) without being transposable to another field, and they require a significant instantiation effort for each new case, making their use difficult. This article proposes an agent-based model called Li-BIM that simulates the behaviour of the occupants in a building and their indoor comfort. Li-BIM model is structured around the numerical modelling of the building-BIM-(with standard exchange format IFC), a high-resolution cognitive model, and the coupling with various physical models. Li-BIM simulates the reactive, deliberative and social behaviour of occupants in residential dwellings based on the Belief-Desire-Intention architecture. This model, thanks its ease of use and flexibility, is an operational and relevant tool to support building design process with a human-centred approach. An application of the model is presented, focusing on energy consumption and the inhabitants' comfort. In-situ data obtained from the instrumented house that served as case study have been compared with simulation results from Li-BIM and a standard energy simulation software, demonstrating the reliability of the proposed model

Scalable context-dependent analysis of emergency egress models

Pervasive environments offer an increasing number of services to a large number of people moving within these environments, including timely information about where to go and when, and contextual information about the surrounding environment. This information may be conveyed to people through public displays or direct to a person's mobile phone. People using these services interact with the system but they are also meeting other people and performing other activities as relevant opportunities arise. The design of such systems and the analysis of collective dynamic behaviour of people within them is a challenging problem. We present results on a novel usage of a scalable analysis technique in this context. We show the validity of an approach based on stochastic process-algebraic models by focussing on a representative example, i.e. emergency egress. The chosen case study has the advantage that detailed data is available from studies employing alternative analysis methods, making cross-methodology comparison possible. We also illustrate how realistic, context-dependent human behaviour, often observed in emergency egress, can naturally be embedded in the models, and how the effect of such behaviour on evacuation can be analysed in an efficient and scalable way. The proposed approach encompasses both the agent modelling viewpoint, as system behaviour emerges from specific (discrete) agent interaction, and the population viewpoint, when classes of homogeneous individuals are considered for a (continuous)approximation of overall system behaviour