Developing a design framework to facilitate adaptive behaviours

Abstract

Adaptive behaviour has a significant impact on the quality of indoor environment, comfort, and energy consumption. Therefore, facilitating positive occupant behaviours will improve these three factors. The aim of this paper is to develop a design framework that can be used as part of the design process to facilitate adaptive behaviours.

This paper reviews studies that focus on reasons behind adaptive behaviours, and implication of these adaptive behaviours on the built environment. This paper highlights that ‘Context’, ‘Occupant’, and ‘Building’ (COB) have the most influence on adaptive behaviours. However, in most cases their influence is not considered holistically. This study also illustrates that adaptive behaviour has implications for the quality of Indoor environment, level of Comfort, and Energy consumption (ICE).

This paper introduces a framework consisting of three stages: (1) Evaluate the relation between COB and ICE factors with adaptive behaviours holistically; (2) Design building's controls for ‘environmental behaviours’, set-up strategies for ‘personal behaviours’, and find a balance between these two; 3) Monitor the performance of adaptive behaviours through Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE).