Development of humanized adaptive baseline information technology (HABIT) for environmental control systems

Many existing Building Management systems (BMS) used for building services system control were not designed to incorporate records of occupant view and did not integrated the real-time occupants' response in order to fine tune the building services system to the individual demands in a dynamic manner. This study based on a survey conducted for collecting occupant's feedbacks towards indoor thermal environments, proposed a Bayesian approach in operation of building services systems of air-conditioned buildings in a humid and subtropical climate in Hong Kong. It enables an adaptive interface relationship between occupants' complaints of indoor thermal environment and the set point of environmental control system. With the technology developed in this study, the design condition in existing BMS systems would be updated automatically with occupant's feedbacks. Compared with traditional 'complaint and readjust-the-set-point' process, the energy saving of air-conditioning system in a hot and humid climate was demonstrated. This algorithm could be useful in optimization of the acceptance of an indoor thermal environment serving a group of occupants with a single set point, as determined by physical measurements and subjective surveys.