Center for the Built Environment

Occupant presence data, a record of where, when and by whom a building is occupied, can be anasset in managing energy consumption in commercial buildings. This thesis develops aframework for evaluating sources of occupant presence data for use in energy management. Theproject starts with a classification of potential occupant data sources using characteristicsrelevant to energy management, such as spatial and temporal granularity. This inventory alsoaddresses the degree to which data sources might characterize occupant groups from the lowgranularity of trend and binary occupied status, to occupant count, to high granularity occupantidentity, preference, and activity information. Potential occupant data sources are then correlatedto particular energy management strategies. As a practical assessment of this correlationframework several occupant data sources were evaluated in field studies at two office sites inNorthern California. At one site purpose-built data sources were installed at workstations whilethe other relied on existing, found, network-based data sources. This project’s survey andclassification of occupant data sources, along with evaluation in the field of installed and existingnetwork-based data sources, can serve as a reference for building energy managers and serviceproviders on collecting occupant data for use in energy management of commercial buildings.