Impact of occupants’ behaviour on the building’s operational use and life cycle assessment

Abstract

The present Master thesis focuses on the occupants’ behaviour, its role on the energy perfor- mance gap and its impact on the life cycle of a building. Firstly, the most critical parameters related to this behaviour are identified and the energy gap in Switzerland is investigated. As a representation of the Swiss building stock, datasets from GEAK certificate are used. Due to absence of details of building elements in this specific database, the method of archetypes is introduced. The validity of the method is being verified, by comparing the heating demand calculated in GEAK datasets with the one through the python tool (used for LCA-LCC simulation). Changing and improving the parameters associated to occupants’ behaviour is a way to mitigate the gap, so three of them are tested here, the indoor temperature, the air flow rate and the reduction b-factor. The final changes lead to a decrease on the gap and a small rise on LCA and LCC of the buildings. In order to have a more significant impact, more modifications need to be done, for new and existing buildings.