Application of mobile positioning occupancy data for building energy simulation: An engineering case study

Occupancy data is a critical input parameter for building energy simulation since it has a big impact on the precision and accuracy of building energy model performance. However, current approaches to get such data through the conventional occupancy detection technology require either implementation of a large-scale sensor network and/or sophisticated and time-consuming computational algorithms, which to some degree limits the application of the real-tune occupancy data for building energy simulation. In the era of the mobile internet, the massive people position data, which is generated by smartphone users and stored on cloud servers, offers a potential to solve this important problem. Such mobile data source is precisely monitored, real-time updated, and accessible with affordable time and labor cost upon customer's agreements in some regions, and therefore could be one of the alternatives to traditional occupancy detection methods. This paper presents an investigation of whether and how the mobile-internet positioning data can benefit building energy simulation. This paper first summarizes the pros and cons of several mainstream occupancy detection methods. Then, the principle of the proposed mobile-internet-based occupancy detection method is introduced. The methodology of using such occupancy data for building energy simulation is developed. An energy performance model of a complex building in Shanghai with a whole building simulation software EnergyPlus is used as a pilot case study to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. A calibration is performed using the building automation system data and the mobile-internet-based occupancy data. The simulation results show that mobile-intemet-based occupancy data can help improve the building model prediction accuracy.