Leveraging existing occupancy-related data for optimal control of commercial office buildings: A review

A primary strategy for the energy-efficient operation of commercial office buildings is to deliver building services, including lighting, heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC), only when and where they are needed, in the amount that they are needed. Since such building services are usually delivered to provide occupants with satisfactory indoor conditions, it is important to accurately determine the occupancy of building spaces in real time as an input to optimal control. This paper first discusses the concepts of building occupancy resolution and accuracy and briefly reviews conventional (explicit) occupancy detection approaches. The focus of this paper is to review and classify emerging, potentially low-cost approaches to leveraging existing data streams that may be related to occupancy, usually referred to as implicit/ambient/soft sensing approaches. Based on a review and a comparison of related projects/systems (in terms of occupancy sensing type, resolution, accuracy, ground truth data collection method, demonstration scale, data fusion and control strategies) the paper presents the state-of-the-art of leveraging existing occupancy-related data for optimal control of commercial office buildings. It also briefly discusses technology trends, challenges, and future research directions.