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

在美国，建筑是能源的主要消耗者。本研究的目标是为可持续建筑创造一个以人为本的设计和工程环境，在这个环境中，居住者的热状态（感觉、舒适和可接受性）和热驱动行为被有效地测量，以减少建筑性能在预测和实际能源性能之间的差距。具体来说，该项目考察了集成在气候室中的沉浸式虚拟环境（IVEs），即多感官IVEs，是否对观察热驱动的居住者行为和改进人类与建筑互动的模型有效。研究结果可能会导致新的和有效的策略，以减少建筑物的能源消耗。基于pi的试点研究，该项目将：1)确定参与者的虚拟体验与现场体验相比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与实际环境的季节不匹配（即在夏季数据收集期间模拟冬季）是否显著改变了热状态和热驱动乘员行为，而与季节匹配的IVE条件相比；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。当环境对居住者的影响被忽视时，建筑的预期和实际能源性能之间就会出现性能差距。来自学术研究和实践的证据强烈表明，人工智能能够引起人类对精心设计的刺激（如照明设计）的反应，但传统的人工智能无法像在真实建筑中那样模拟冷却或加热。长期以来，气候室一直被用作研究居住者热状态的可靠设备，但它们不能轻易地诱导居住者对设计环境的反应行为。多感官IVEs结合了IVEs和气候室的强度，但多感官IVEs是否能产生与原位实验相当的热状态和热驱动的居住者行为尚不清楚。这一新知识将使建筑设计和工程以及居住者行为数据收集中使用多感官人工智能技术创建上下文敏感的、以人为本的方法成为可能。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了解居住者的热驱动居住者行为对可持续建筑至关重要。多感官人工智能不仅为可持续建筑的设计和工程提供了新的工具，而且对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，pi将通过与VIFI团队的研究人员、一个名为可持续人类建筑生态系统（SHBE）的研究协调网络以及ASHRAE的技术委员会合作，创造一种新的数据共享和研究复制方法。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.