Exploring Thermally-Driven Occupant Behavior in Immersive Virtual Environments to Enhance the Design and Engineering of Sustainable Buildings

建筑是美国的主要能源消耗者。这项研究的目标是为可持续建筑创造一个以人为中心的设计和工程环境，在这个环境中，有效地测量居住者的热状态(感觉、舒适度和可接受性)和热驱动行为，以缩小建筑性能预测和实际能源性能之间的差距。具体地说，该项目考察了集成在气候室中的沉浸式虚拟环境(IVE)，即多感官IVE，对于观察热驱动的乘员行为和改进人与建筑相互作用的模型是否有效。这些发现可能会导致新的有效战略，以降低建筑物的能源消耗。该项目以个人投资机构的试点研究为基础，将：1)确定与现场体验相比，参与者的虚拟体验是否显著改变了他们的热状态和热驱动行为；2)确定沉浸式虚拟环境和实际环境(即在夏季数据收集期间模拟冬季)的季节性不匹配是否与季节性匹配的IVE条件下的人的热状态和热驱动行为显著改变；3)在虚拟信息结构基础设施(VIFI)平台上创建共享IVE数据和分析的机制，以支持大型多机构研究社区的科学复制。目前，设计师和工程师依靠基于现有建筑数据的预测模型来决定未来的建筑设计。当忽略环境对居住者的影响时，建筑的预计能源性能和实际能源性能之间会出现性能差距。来自学术研究和实践的证据有力地表明，IFE能够激发人类对精心设计的刺激的反应，例如在照明设计中，但仅靠传统的IFE不能像在真实建筑中那样模拟制冷或供暖。长期以来，气候室一直被用作研究乘员热状态的可靠设备，但它们不容易根据设计环境诱导乘员行为。多感官IVE结合了IFE和气候室的力量，但在现场实验中，多感官IVE产生类似的热状态和热驱动乘员行为的有效性尚不清楚。这一新知识将使使用多感官IVE进行建筑设计和工程以及居民行为数据收集的上下文敏感型、以人为中心的方法成为可能。可持续建筑对于维持个人、家庭和社会的福祉至关重要。建筑物消耗了世界上30%以上的一次能源，主要是为了提供热舒适。因此，在设计过程中更好地理解居住者的热驱动行为对可持续建筑至关重要。多感官IVE不仅为支持可持续建筑的设计和工程提供了新的工具，而且也向其他科学领域提出了智力挑战。为了最大限度地发挥这项研究的影响，PIS将通过与VIFI团队(称为可持续人类建筑生态系统(SHBE)的研究协调网络)中的研究人员以及ASHRAE的技术委员会合作，为数据共享和研究复制创建一种新的方法。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Buildings are a major consumer of energy in the U.S. The goal of this research is to create a human-centered design and engineering environment for sustainable buildings where occupant thermal state (sensation, comfort and acceptability) and thermally-driven behaviors are effectively measured to reduce building performance gaps between predicted and actual energy performance. Specifically, this project examines if immersive virtual environments (IVEs) integrated within a climate chamber, i.e., multi-sensory IVEs, are effective for observing thermally-driven occupant behavior and for improving models of human-building interactions. The findings could result in new and effective strategies for reducing energy consumption in buildings. Building on pilot studies by the PIs, this project will: 1) determine if the virtual experience of participants significantly alters their thermal states and thermally-driven behaviors compared to in-situ experience; 2) determine if seasonal mismatch of immersive virtual environment and actual environment (i.e., simulating winter during summer data collection) significantly alters the thermal state and thermally-driven occupant behaviors compared to those in seasonally matched IVE conditions; and 3) create a mechanism of sharing IVE data and analytics on the virtual information fabric infrastructure (VIFI) platform to support the replication of science in a large multi-institutional research community. Currently, designers and engineers rely on predictive models based on data from existing buildings to make decisions about future building designs. When the impact of context on occupants is ignored, performance gaps emerge between the projected and actual energy performance of a building. Evidence from both academic research and practice strongly suggests that IVEs are capable of eliciting human responses to well-designed stimuli such as in lightingdesign, but conventional IVEs alone cannot simulate cooling or heating as in real buildings. Climate chambers have long been used as a reliable apparatus for studying occupant thermal states, but they cannot easily induce occupant behavior in response to design contexts. Multi-sensory IVEs combine the strength of IVEs and climate chambers, but the effectiveness of multi-sensory IVEs to produce comparable thermal state and thermally-driven occupant behavior as in-situ experiments is unknown. This new knowledge will enable the creation of context-sensitive, human-centered approaches using multi-sensory IVEs for building design and engineering, and occupant behavior data collection. Sustainable buildings are essential for sustaining the wellbeing of individuals, families and the society. Buildings consume more than 30% of the world's primary energy, largely for providing thermal comfort. A better understanding of occupant's thermally-driven occupant behavior during design is thus critical tosustainable buildings. Multi-sensory IVEs not only provide a new tool to support the design and engineering of sustainable buildings, but also present intellectual challenges to other scientific fields. To maximize the impact of this research, the PIs will create a novel approach for data sharing and research replication by collaborating with researchers in the VIFI team, a research coordination network called sustainable human-building ecosystems (SHBE), as well as with technical committees of ASHRAE.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.