IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v10y2018i5p1404-d144227.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Impact of Human Actions on Building Energy Performance: A Case Study in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)

Author

Listed:
  • Ahmed Al Amoodi

    (Department of Industrial and System Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Masdar Institute, Abu Dhabi 54224, UAE)

  • Elie Azar

    (Department of Industrial and System Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Masdar Institute, Abu Dhabi 54224, UAE)

Abstract

There is a growing interest in the literature to understand how actions taken by occupants and facility managers can affect building performance. However, user-centric building energy research: (1) remains understudied compared to design-focused research efforts; (2) overlooks combined effects or uncertainty in multiple parameters; and (3) typically does not cover particular types of buildings (e.g., educational facilities), nor buildings subject to extreme weather conditions. This paper fills an important gap in the literature by proposing a comprehensive energy modeling and analysis framework to quantify the impact of human action on building energy consumption. The framework applies various data analysis methods such as differential, fractional factorial, and Monte Carlo analysis methods, in order to capture potential combined or synergetic effects of human actions on building performance. A case study is then presented on typical educational buildings located in the extreme hot climate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE). Results indicate that uncertainty in human actions can lead up to a ±25% variation from average energy consumption levels, confirming the significant role that people have in making their built environment more efficient and sustainable.

Suggested Citation

  • Ahmed Al Amoodi & Elie Azar, 2018. "Impact of Human Actions on Building Energy Performance: A Case Study in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-19, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:5:p:1404-:d:144227
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/5/1404/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/5/1404/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Webber, Carrie A. & Roberson, Judy A. & McWhinney, Marla C. & Brown, Richard E. & Pinckard, Margaret J. & Busch, John F., 2006. "After-hours power status of office equipment in the USA," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 31(14), pages 2823-2838.
    2. Delzendeh, Elham & Wu, Song & Lee, Angela & Zhou, Ying, 2017. "The impact of occupants’ behaviours on building energy analysis: A research review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 1061-1071.
    3. Afshari, Afshin & Friedrich, Luiz, 2016. "A proposal to introduce tradable energy savings certificates in the emirate of Abu Dhabi," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 1342-1351.
    4. Azar, Elie & Menassa, Carol C., 2014. "A comprehensive framework to quantify energy savings potential from improved operations of commercial building stocks," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 459-472.
    5. Sgouridis, Sgouris & Abdullah, Ayu & Griffiths, Steve & Saygin, Deger & Wagner, Nicholas & Gielen, Dolf & Reinisch, Hannes & McQueen, Dane, 2016. "RE-mapping the UAE’s energy transition: An economy-wide assessment of renewable energy options and their policy implications," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 1166-1180.
    6. Tian, Wei, 2013. "A review of sensitivity analysis methods in building energy analysis," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 411-419.
    7. Bornatico, Raffaele & Hüssy, Jonathan & Witzig, Andreas & Guzzella, Lino, 2013. "Surrogate modeling for the fast optimization of energy systems," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 653-662.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mohammed Alnahhal†& Omar Antar & Ahmad Sakhrieh & Muataz Al Hazza, 2024. "Analyzing Energy Consumption in Universities: A Literature Review," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 14(3), pages 18-27, May.
    2. Radwan A. Almasri & Nidal H. Abu-Hamdeh & Abdullah Alajlan & Yazeed Alresheedi, 2022. "Utilizing a Domestic Water Tank to Make the Air Conditioning System in Residential Buildings More Sustainable in Hot Regions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(22), pages 1-19, November.
    3. Ardeshir Mahdavi & Christiane Berger & Hadeer Amin & Eleni Ampatzi & Rune Korsholm Andersen & Elie Azar & Verena M. Barthelmes & Matteo Favero & Jakob Hahn & Dolaana Khovalyg & Henrik N. Knudsen & Ale, 2021. "The Role of Occupants in Buildings’ Energy Performance Gap: Myth or Reality?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-44, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Griffiths, Steven, 2017. "A review and assessment of energy policy in the Middle East and North Africa region," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 249-269.
    2. Antonio Paone & Jean-Philippe Bacher, 2018. "The Impact of Building Occupant Behavior on Energy Efficiency and Methods to Influence It: A Review of the State of the Art," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-19, April.
    3. Azar, Elie & Nikolopoulou, Christina & Papadopoulos, Sokratis, 2016. "Integrating and optimizing metrics of sustainable building performance using human-focused agent-based modeling," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 926-937.
    4. Hamed Nabizadeh Rafsanjani & Changbum R. Ahn & Mahmoud Alahmad, 2015. "A Review of Approaches for Sensing, Understanding, and Improving Occupancy-Related Energy-Use Behaviors in Commercial Buildings," Energies, MDPI, vol. 8(10), pages 1-34, October.
    5. Ünal, Berat Berkan & Onaygil, Sermin & Acuner, Ebru & Cin, Rabia, 2022. "Application of energy efficiency obligation scheme for electricity distribution companies in Turkey," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    6. Marta Gangolells & Miquel Casals & Núria Forcada & Marcel Macarulla, 2020. "Life Cycle Analysis of a Game-Based Solution for Domestic Energy Saving," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-18, August.
    7. F. Wang & G. H. Huang & Y. Fan & Y. P. Li, 2020. "Robust Subsampling ANOVA Methods for Sensitivity Analysis of Water Resource and Environmental Models," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 34(10), pages 3199-3217, August.
    8. Tian, Wei & Song, Jitian & Li, Zhanyong & de Wilde, Pieter, 2014. "Bootstrap techniques for sensitivity analysis and model selection in building thermal performance analysis," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 320-328.
    9. Wang, Lixiao & Jing, Z.X. & Zheng, J.H. & Wu, Q.H. & Wei, Feng, 2018. "Decentralized optimization of coordinated electrical and thermal generations in hierarchical integrated energy systems considering competitive individuals," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 607-622.
    10. Solaymani, Saeed, 2019. "CO2 emissions patterns in 7 top carbon emitter economies: The case of transport sector," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 989-1001.
    11. Lei, Nuoa & Masanet, Eric, 2020. "Statistical analysis for predicting location-specific data center PUE and its improvement potential," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    12. Yuan, Jun & Nian, Victor & Su, Bin & Meng, Qun, 2017. "A simultaneous calibration and parameter ranking method for building energy models," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 657-666.
    13. Sun, Kaiyu & Hong, Tianzhen & Taylor-Lange, Sarah C. & Piette, Mary Ann, 2016. "A pattern-based automated approach to building energy model calibration," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 214-224.
    14. Papineau, Maya & Yassin, Kareman & Newsham, Guy & Brice, Sarah, 2021. "Conditional demand analysis as a tool to evaluate energy policy options on the path to grid decarbonization," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    15. Wang, Ran & Lu, Shilei & Feng, Wei, 2020. "A three-stage optimization methodology for envelope design of passive house considering energy demand, thermal comfort and cost," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    16. Liping Liao & Chukun Huang & Minzhe Du, 2022. "The Effect of Energy Quota Trading on Energy Saving in China: Insight from a Quasi-Natural Experiment," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(22), pages 1-17, November.
    17. Mastrucci, Alessio & Marvuglia, Antonino & Leopold, Ulrich & Benetto, Enrico, 2017. "Life Cycle Assessment of building stocks from urban to transnational scales: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 316-332.
    18. Rehman, Hassam ur & Hirvonen, Janne & Sirén, Kai, 2017. "A long-term performance analysis of three different configurations for community-sized solar heating systems in high latitudes," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 479-493.
    19. Østergård, Torben & Jensen, Rasmus Lund & Maagaard, Steffen Enersen, 2018. "A comparison of six metamodeling techniques applied to building performance simulations," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 89-103.
    20. Joseph Amoako-Attah & Ali B-Jahromi, 2016. "The Impact of Different Weather Files on London Detached Residential Building Performance—Deterministic, Uncertainty, and Sensitivity Analysis on CIBSE TM48 and CIBSE TM49 Future Weather Variables Usi," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(11), pages 1-18, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:5:p:1404-:d:144227. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.