With the overall goal to integrate and implement occupancy and occupant behaviour into the design process and building operation in order to improve both energy performance and occupant comfort, Annex 79 focused on:

developing new scientific knowledge about interdependences between thermal, visual, aural and olfactory influences on perception and occupant behaviour in indoor environments,

understanding interactions between occupants and building systems by using interfaces, e.g. how interfaces en-/discourage occupants taking advantage of adaptive opportunities for improving their comfort situation, as well as the impact on building energy use,

deploying ‘big data’ (e.g. data mining and machine learning) for the building sector based on various sources of building and occupant data as well as sensing technologies,

developing methods and guidelines and preparing recommendations for standards to integrate occupant models in building design and operation, and

performing focused case studies to test the new methods and models in different design and operation phases in order to obtain valuable feedback for the researchers and practitioners.

The purpose of the Annex is to provide new insight into comfort-related occupant behaviour in buildings and its impact on building energy performance. An open collaboration platform for data and software will support the use of data-mining methods and advanced occupant behaviour models. It will further promote the usage of this knowledge in building design and operation processes by giving policy support, preparing proposals for standards and providing guidelines for practitioners.