TY - JOUR
T1 - Designing buildings for real occupants
T2 - An agent-based approach
AU - Andrews, Clinton J.
AU - Yi, Daniel
AU - Krogmann, Uta
AU - Senick, Jennifer A.
AU - Wener, Richard E.
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received April 9, 2010; accepted October 19, 2010. Date of publication March 28, 2011; date of current version October 19, 2011. This work was supported by in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant CMS-0725503, the U.S. Green Building Council, and the Liberty Property Trust. This paper was recommended by Associate Editor C. M. Lewis.
PY - 2011/11
Y1 - 2011/11
N2 - Building information modeling is only beginning to incorporate human factors, although buildings are sites where humans and technologies interact with globally significant consequences. Some buildings fail to perform as their designers intended, in part because users do not or cannot properly operate the building, and some occupants behave differently than designers expect. Innovative buildings, e.g., green buildings, are particularly susceptible to usability problems. This paper presents a framework for prospectively measuring the usability of designs before buildings are constructed, while there is still time to improve the design. The framework, which was implemented as an agent-based computer simulation model, tests how well buildings are likely to perform, given realistic occupants. An illustrative model for lighting design shows that this modeling approach has practical efficacy, demonstrating that, to the extent that users exhibit heterogeneous behaviors and preferences, designs that allow greater local control and ease of operation perform better.
AB - Building information modeling is only beginning to incorporate human factors, although buildings are sites where humans and technologies interact with globally significant consequences. Some buildings fail to perform as their designers intended, in part because users do not or cannot properly operate the building, and some occupants behave differently than designers expect. Innovative buildings, e.g., green buildings, are particularly susceptible to usability problems. This paper presents a framework for prospectively measuring the usability of designs before buildings are constructed, while there is still time to improve the design. The framework, which was implemented as an agent-based computer simulation model, tests how well buildings are likely to perform, given realistic occupants. An illustrative model for lighting design shows that this modeling approach has practical efficacy, demonstrating that, to the extent that users exhibit heterogeneous behaviors and preferences, designs that allow greater local control and ease of operation perform better.
KW - Buildings
KW - design automation
KW - human factors
KW - simulation
KW - usability
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=80054799938&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=80054799938&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TSMCA.2011.2116116
DO - 10.1109/TSMCA.2011.2116116
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:80054799938
SN - 1083-4427
VL - 41
SP - 1077
EP - 1091
JO - IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Part A:Systems and Humans
JF - IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Part A:Systems and Humans
IS - 6
M1 - 5740371
ER -