6. Energy efficient buildings and behavioural implications
6.4. User-centred design and behavioural implications on energy savings and comfort
thresholds; scenarios creation and possible outcomes; impact evaluation; im-plementation and monitoring. It must be remarked that the ambition to shift the energy efficiency standards towards NZEB or PEB can only achieved with deep renovation where a massive use of RES is adopted, and the pro-posed technical solutions are coupled with appropriate end-users’ behav-iours. That means inhabitants are informed and aware of both the functional principles behind the system operation and of the potential effects of their own decisions (i.e. the decrease of efficiency when windows are left open and mechanical ventilation is operating, day or night use of appliances, etc.).
This puts the role of end users at the core of the process, like a skilled driver of a very performing car, suggesting a different design approach in which solutions are thought to support the mutual interaction between man and building: a change in the design paradigm that apparently lies in the use of Information and Communication Technology [ICT] and instead is strictly linked to the understanding of the user’s behaviour.
6.4. User-centred design and behavioural implications on energy
Fig. 6.5 – The adoption of advanced management systems allows the end user to carefully set operating conditions with potential relevant impacts on savings and comfort conditions.
Source: Author’s photo archive.
Conventional solutions in this field usually operate with control touch systems enabling to manage most of the installed devices and systems (in-cluding sun blinds, lighting, air conditioning, etc.) also via smart devices (tablet, smart phones, etc.) which allow the end-user a remote control in the case some specific actions are required to change a routine scenario (due to individual decisions or unexpected external reasons). Advanced solutions, based on machine learning technologies, are under development at pilot stage with the purpose to track and record the user’s preferences or habits and optimize the system response accordingly while possibly suggesting possible alternative energy savings options when preferred conditions are not addressed towards efficiency principles. This approach aims to facilitate the adoption of sustainable behaviours even with not particularly informed (or
interested) users. If one can easily share the objective to widen as much as possible the adoption of sustainable habits, it would certainly be much more useful that owners, tenants, and users in general increase their level of aware-ness and understanding of the connected phenomena. That’s why many sys-tems, but also service and energy suppliers, are developing informative apps which are designed to make users more familiar with basic indicators and values that can be easily visualized on their smart mobiles as notes following some specific actions to advise them of the cause-effect relation. It is also very important that the user understands the functional principles behind the design concept and the system configuration, such as the Mechanical Venti-lation setting during the daytime and the different seasons or the need to shield glazed surfaces to avoid overheating during summertime, for exploit-ing its savexploit-ing potential without reducexploit-ing optimal comfort levels. New build-ings and advanced renovations are evolving the design concept of building envelopes which are thought to become even more relevant in controlling the heat and ventilation exchange between indoor and outdoor environment.
Not only the massive integration of thermal insulation, associated to air tight-ness, ensure to drastically reduce dispersion and maximize the potential en-ergy savings reducing the service operation time, but also the adoption of innovative solutions to control the solar radiation and natural light inflow, especially during summer, allow to protect the glazed surfaces and reduce energy demand for cooling.
The use of climate adaptive building shells is based on the idea that the façade can adapt to variable conditions – such as the amount of incident solar radiation, the temperature or humidity variation etc. – on daily and even sea-sonal basis shading the glazed elements reacting to an external stimulus. This is preferably to be achieved using passive actuators which do not require energy supply (as typically happens with electro-mechanical solutions) and self-adjust their configuration according to the external conditions. Adaptive solutions operate independently from the user control following the optimi-sation of the response to variable external condition: if on the one hand this clearly maximize the potential savings and does not require an active con-tribute of the inhabitants to set it (that means they could not be fully aware of the effects of configuration on indoor conditions) on the other one it is often perceived as something preventing the user to set the configuration ac-cording to his own preferences and therefore as a limitation. That’s why many adaptive solutions are design to include an override letting the user to force the optimal configuration into the preferred one (i.e. a fully open con-figuration to maximize views on the landscape instead a shielding configu-ration preventing overheating).
Fig. 6.6 – Example of an advanced façade shading system.
Source: Author’s photo archive.
This is an extreme example of how the understanding of phenomena and of possible related technical responses of the system by the users is crucial point to establish an effective and informed human-machine interrelation.
Much more important, the awareness of the user towards his own decisions is a key point also for addressing more sustainable behavioural patterns with-out compromising the achievement of comfortable and healthy conditions (which is a contemporary major issue).
Following this approach, the system must be designed to be adaptive – both to external variations and user’s preferences – and the decisional capac-ity of people must be placed at the core of the strategy to let a certain level of freedom in choices and to make these choices responsible and energy sav-ing oriented.
This main objective requires to consider real time monitoring as a tool for analysing both the building response and users’ capacity to understand and use it, opening several opportunities to provide more tailored and effective solutions and, at the same time, it clearly requires coping with data protection and ownership which are certainly major issues to manage nowadays.
However, this will not prevent to develop innovative design strategies involving the end-users from the very beginning to facilitate the mind set shift and to accelerate the adoption of more effective behavioural patterns which will be an essential part of the energy transition especially when tar-geting very high standards like PEBs.
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