Introduction

People spend about 60% of their time in their homes: environments in which the person should feel comfortable and be healthy on account of the technical services and systems in their building (Jia, Srinivasan, & Raheem, 2017). The supply of a comfortable environment should be achieved in an energy efficient way, especially if we are to achieve the EU 2020 or 2030 targets of residential energy consumption. However, in spite of the technological advancements and energy efficient technologies that have already been developed to provide comfort, energy consumption is not decreasing at the rate it should (Tsemekidi Tzeiranaki et al., 2019). There are several complex factors affecting energy consumption of which occupant behaviours is one of them, and building systems, services, and products being some of the others. Moreover, the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) field seems to focus mainly on the thermal and other physiological aspects of comfort and energy expenditure. Yet, collaboration of the IEQ field with the fields of energy engineering and social sciences to combine knowledge to have a better grasp of both sides –building and occupant- of the issue of consumption, does not seem to occur (D’Oca, Hong, & Langevin, 2018; Sovacool, 2014). Therefore, the problem that energy savings have not been achieved with the currently available technological developments could be related to the behavioural factors influencing energy consumption

Home Occupant Archetypes:

This research is aimed at better understanding how occupants use energy in their homes from a comfort-driven perspective, in order to propose customized environmental characteristics that could improve the occupants’ comfort while reducing energy consumption. To propose such bespoke environmental features and feedback, occupant archetypes were produced based on the intentions and motivations behind comfort behaviours. Building upon the aim of this thesis, the following main research question was proposed: How can energy behaviours be studied from a comfort-driven perspective in order to facilitate the development of environmental features that support more efficient occupant behaviours and that provide the comfort needs of the person? A mixed-methods human-centered design approach was developed for which four steps were required to answer the main research question, reflecting also the four parts of this dissertation. 1. An extensive and multidisciplinary literature review investigated behavioural theories and comfort theories to find out what the drivers behind behaviours are and to understand comfort from a holistic and integrative lens, including social and psychological comfort. Additionally, an overview of energy use in residential buildings was presented, along with the links between energy consumption and occupant behaviours, thus explaining the problems of performance gaps and the rebound effect. The review eventually proposes that energy consumption, behaviours, and comfort are elements of an interacting system, as many behavioural expressions exercised at home are comfort-driven and several of these comfortdriven behaviours result in energy use. This part was the platform on which a questionnaire was developed based on constructs that motivate behaviour: locus of control, attitudes towards energy, environmental needs, and emotions towards home, in addition to other variables such as health status, demographics, and energy consuming habitual actions. Thus, the questionnaire is a tool that consolidates in a single instrument a self-reported assessment of energy consumption patterns and comfort behaviours. The resulting questionnaire was composed of previously validated instruments that were adapted to the context to assess the corresponding constructs and was composed of 65 variables. 2. The newly developed questionnaire was pilot tested with a population consisting of master students of the faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of the TU Delft. The pilot was launched to make corrections and adjust the questionnaire and to validate the effectiveness of the analysis method to cluster respondents. The TwoStep cluster analysis was chosen as it is a method normally used in the segmentation of health behaviours and was originally developed to group customers in marketing. More recently, it has been used in studies assessing different types of behaviours, especially in the healthcare field. The pilot ensured that the segmentation method was appropriate for the types of variables involved. The cluster analysis produced a model of six clusters, which was successfully validated according to a process that ensures that the groups are both stable and reliable. Subsequently, the questionnaire was administered to the full sample of 761 respondents –mainly composed of students and employees- and was analysed accordingly with the method. The final model was also validated. The final model resulted in five distinct home occupant clusters, which differed on their comfort needs, attitudes towards energy, environmental control beliefs, and emotions towards their home environment. These clusters were the basis of the forthcoming archetypes. 3. In order to better develop the archetypes, occupant-related qualitative data and environment-related quantitative data was needed. A field study was designed to interview occupiers in their homes and to gather building data. To gather building data, a comprehensive checklist inventoried building characteristics related to energy expenditure, such as type of glazing, type of ventilation, type of appliances, etc. Additionally, the indoor environmental parameters (relative humidity, carbon dioxide, and temperature) were monitored, and finally, actual energy consumption readings were taken for a month during the summer period. Parallelly, in-depth and semi-structured interviews were conducted, which are techniques used to gather qualitative behavioural data from the home occupants. Questions related to their energy consuming habits and practices were asked, as well as about their environmental needs for comfort and energy attitudes. Interviews were analysed with a text mining technique: sentiment analysis, which allows assessing the sentiments associated with the topics discussed. Both qualitative and quantitative data were used to complete the previously found statistical clusters, in order to develop the five final archetypes that are the following: Archetype 1: Restrained Conventionals; Archetype 2: Incautious realists; Archetype 3: Positive savers; Archetype 4: Sensitive wasters; Archetype 5: Vulnerable pessimists. 4. Self-reported data and interviews allow collecting explicit knowledge: a type of knowledge that is readily available and is related to facts and memories. When verbally expressed, these facts and memories tend to be processed through biases and conscious filters. As a result, to produce more accurate and complete archetypes, another type of knowledge is also needed: tacit knowledge. This is a type of knowledge is related to feelings, intuitions, and emotions, which tends to be difficult to express with verbalizations. To collect it, focus group sessions were designed to assess the home occupants’ tacit knowledge in terms of what it means to use energy in their homes and what the ideal home experience is. This was collected with the generation of collages that the participants produced with visual and tactile materials, after which they described the process and meanings of their creations. The data was analysed with the use of affinity diagrams that allows to group large amounts of qualitative data into manageable categories and to see the relations between the categories. The results showed two categories: building and occupant, with five sub-categories in total: behavioural aspects, psychological aspects, energy aspects, financial aspects, and home aspects. Each of these subcategories was composed of codes extracted from the collages produced and from the verbal explanations given by the participants. Finally, the data was related back to each of the archetypes, in order to produce final fully-fledged archetypes. The results show that each archetype has different needs, expectations, and experiences as to how they appraise energy and how they desire comfort in their own houses. Consequently, this gives insights into the fact that each of the archetypes is different, they each need differing environmental features to satisfy their comfort needs, to achieve that comfort, and to perceive the impact of their comfort behaviours on the energy outputs of their household. The differing characteristics that each archetype exhibited were translated into preliminary customized design parameters or bespoke environmental features for each of them. They are summed up as follows: the Restrained Conventional needs large windows for a view and a connection to the outside. Because they value personal space and social interaction at home, yet have low environmental control, the plan of the home needs to give a transition from private to social. They are conservative in the energy use and concerned about their finances: energy feedback can be given to them relating their practices to monetary consequences. The Incautious Realist places importance on having the right size and layout for particular purposes: therefore, they need modularity that they can manually control, due to their high external control. They also value safety and privacy, so the interactions with façade elements need to ensure them that their environment is safe and private. They have a high concern about finances, yet they have a high expenditure. To boost their consumption and their need for control, their home can be equipped with a control station from which they can control appliances, and see their consumption as a financial reflection. The Positive Saver places value on the cleanliness and orderliness of the place, thus they need surfaces and spaces that are easy to clean and reach. They are the biggest savers of all the archetypes and this seems to be due to their environmental concerns. To reduce even further their consumption, feedback can be given to them by translating their comfort actions –oven use, etc. - into environmental consequences. The Sensitive Waster needs softness and tactile sensations in their house. They also place importance on having high freedom of their practices in their house. They are the largest energy waster, and they do not worry about their finances, however, they do value the environment and the future. A smart feature can be designed for them to save more energy by equating their practices to ecological consequences to have a more conservative energy use. The Vulnerable Pessimist places emphasis on the aesthetics of the house, the technologies, and the gadgets. They also value a sense of community and connectedness to their neighbourhood. As result, they need homes that allow for these interactions, in small complexes or pavilions. They do not worry about financial aspects, however their expenditure is middle-range: to improve it; they can receive feedback from the consumption of their community as an awareness tool. The findings of this study can help to improve energy predictions, by making more accurate models with different types of occupants. Furthermore, for the existing housing stock, corporations can use the archetypes to tailor the indoor environmental features and interfaces to the future occupant; or, similarly, different occupants can be better allocated to better matching existing dwellings. As for the design of the future stock, architects and contractors can make use of the archetypes by having a more inclusive design process, by answering real needs of the future occupant and improving the decision making of architects. For policies and energy efficiency programs, knowing that there are different types of occupants can allow to bridge gaps between occupant and provider, by encouraging a participatory or inclusive research and design phase, for the design of devices, feedbacks, and interfaces tailored to the specific archetype

Questionnaire testing, validating, and preliminary results

Abstract This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of the TwoStep cluster analysis and the development and first results of a new questionnaire for measuring comfort, health, and energy habits. The justification for the questionnaire is to consolidate questions of six specific domains about occupants' energy consumption patterns, from the behavioural and psychological perspectives into one instrument. The questionnaire was developed from a literature review, iterative conceptualization, and testing. The resulting instrument was administered to a sample of home occupants, comprising of bachelor students of Architecture of the Delft University of Technology. The objective of the study was to examine the effectiveness of the TwoStep cluster analysis to produce occupant profiles. 316 emails were sent out inviting participants to complete the questionnaire. With the TwoStep cluster analysis, it was possible to distinguish six different archetypes of occupants based on their behavioural characteristics. These were the Relaxed Optimists, Unconcerned Indifferents, Restrained Sensitives, Positive Absolutists, Incautious Negativistics, and Resigned Savers. The results provide promising evidence of the questionnaire's potential to distinguish different occupant energy-consumption profiles based on distinct psychosocial domains in a single and concise instrument, while also showing that the analysis method is appropriate for the type of variables gathered. The value of recognizing these profiles allows for a better understanding of occupants' differing energy consumption patterns in their homes and tailoring interventions to their specific needs

Sistema web para la eficiencia operacional en la empresa Protemax Corporacion S.A.C., Lima 2023

La investigación tuvo como objetivo general el mejorar la eficiencia del área de producción de la empresa de servicios automotriz Protemax Corporación S.A.C. mediante el desarrollo de una aplicación web para lograr la eficiencia operacional obteniendo como resultado una información correcta y oportuna respecto a los servicios atendidos por el área de producción para lo cual se utilizó la metodología de Proceso Unificado de Rational (RUP) ya que constituye una de las metodologías estándar más usadas para el análisis, implementación y documentación de sistemas y es con la metodología con la que actualmente usa el área de TI en los proyectos de desarrollo de la empresa. Los resultados obtenidos de acuerdo con la validación de la solución propuesta evidenciaron que la aplicación web satisface los objetivos establecidos logrando mejorar significativamente la gestión del área de producción, así como también se logró mayor fluidez de la información solicitada por el área comercial

Relación entre el contenido de mercurio, características fisicoquímicas y el precio en conservas de pescado expendidas en un mercado mayorista

El mercurio y sus compuestos son extremadamente tóxicos para los seres humanos, los ecosistemas y la vida silvestre. Es considerado un metal pesado con un alto grado de toxicidad, que debido a su proceso de biomagnificación suele contaminar a las especies marinas. De esta manera se forma un ciclo de contaminación hasta ser ingerido bajo la forma de metil mercurio por los humanos a través de la dieta. La investigación realizada determina el contenido de mercurio, las características fisicoquímicas y su relación con el precio en conservas de pescado expendidas en el Mercado Mayorista de Productores de Santa Anita, Lima. Desarrolla un estudio de tipo cuantitativo, analítico, observacional, transversal y prospectivo con muestreo probabilístico. La muestra está formada por 32 latas de conservas tipo grated, agrupadas en 2 grupos homogéneos de 16 muestras de diferentes marcas, las cuales han sido seleccionadas de manera aleatoria, a partir de puestos de venta constituidos formalmente y fueron elegidos, según precios de venta, teniendo precios desde S/ 1.5 - S/4.5 soles, a partir de especies como el: atún, caballa, sardina y jurel. Para el análisis estadístico se utilizaron la prueba de normalidad Shapiro-Wilk (n<50) y la prueba de Correlación de Pearson (r) y Spearman. Encuentra que el valor promedio de mercurio más alto se encontró en la especie caballa con una media de 0.32 ± 0.03ppm y el valor más bajo fue la especie atún y jurel ambas con una media de 0.28 ± 0.03ppm. Se observó que la especie más contaminada fue el atún con un valor de 0.42ppm superando a la Normativa Japonesa (JPHA) Concluye que existe una correlación positiva entre el contenido de mercurio y las características fisicoquímicas. Así como también existe una correlación negativa entre el contenido de mercurio y el precio.Tesi

Uso de las TIC y rendimiento académico en estudiantes de nutrición de una universidad pública de Lima, 2019 - 2020

Objetivo: Determinar la relación entre el uso de la Tic y el rendimiento académico de los estudiantes de nutrición de una Universidad Pública de Lima, 2019 - 2020. Así como determinar la relación el uso de las Tic y el rendimiento académico, según la metodología de enseñanza presencial (2019) y virtual (2020). Método: Estudio de tipo Cuantitativo, Correlacional, Longitudinal y Retrospectivo, con muestreo probabilístico. Lugar: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Población: Formada 200 por estudiantes de nutrición de pregrado de la Escuela Profesional de Nutrición de la Facultad de Medicina Humana. Análisis Estadístico: El análisis estadístico utilizó la prueba de normalidad Kolmogorov Smirnov y la prueba de Correlación de Pearson (r), para posteriormente realizar el análisis descriptivo e inferencial en función a las variables de estudio. Resultados: Se evidenció una correlación moderada - fuerte y positiva, según el r de Pearson=0.67 (metodología de enseñanza presencial) y 0.72 (metodología de enseñanza virtual). Los cuales fueron estadísticamente significativos, (p valor =< 0.05). Conclusiones: Se concluyó una relación estadísticamente significativa, respecto al uso de las Tic en el rendimiento académico de estudiantes de nutrición, según la metodología de enseñanza, presencial (moderada) y virtual (fuerte)