A Framework for Utilization of Occupants’ Trajectory Data to Enhance Building Management

Modern people spend approximately up to 90% of their time indoors. Moreover, building operational phase contributes to more environmental impact (e.g. energy use and carbon emission) than other phases. Hence, proper building management is critical to the welfare of human beings and mother nature. And occupant behavior is crucial information for building managers. However, in the past, such information was based on statistics and assumptions, which may lead to inefficient and even false operations. As the monitoring techniques developed rapidly, occupant behavior can be tracked more easily. Although research related to building management and occupant behaviors has grown steadily in the past few decades, more direct discussions between occupant trajectory data and building management are still limited. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to propose a procedural framework to collect and utilize occupants’ trajectory data for building management. This framework is developed by reviewing existing applications to identify the key factors to be considered during the process and the relationships between these factors are also analyzed. Application scenarios (includes safety, space, energy management) and monitoring areas (public and private) are identified as important inputs to decide what kind of data to collect. Data processing, granularity, and privacy are recognized as essential attributes of trajectory data to consider. Furthermore, the strength and weaknesses of different monitoring techniques to provide different occupant trajectory data are also presented as an additional reference for building managers.