Multi-agent stochastic simulation of occupants in buildings

One of the principle causes for deviations between predicted and simulated performance of buildings relates to the stochastic nature of their occupants: their presence, activities whilst present, activity dependent behaviours and the consequent implications for their perceived comfort. A growing research community is active in the development and validation of stochastic models addressing these issues; and considerable progress has been made. Specifically models in the areas of presence, activities while present, shading devices, window openings and lighting usage. One key outstanding challenge relates to the integration of these prototype models with building simulation in a coherent and generalizable way; meaning that emerging models can be integrated with a range of building simulation software. This thesis describes our proof of concept platform that integrates stochastic occupancy models within a multi agent simulation platform, which communicates directly with building simulation software. The tool is called Nottingham Multi-Agent Stochastic Simulation (No-MASS). No-MASS is tested with a building performance simulation solver to demonstrate the effectiveness of the integrated stochastic models on a residential building and a non-residential building. To account for diversity between occupants No-MASS makes use of archetypical behaviours within the stochastic models of windows, shades and activities. Thus providing designers with means to evaluate the performance of their designs in response to the range of expected behaviours and to evaluate the robustness of their design solutions; which is not possible using current simplistic deterministic representations. A methodology for including rule based models is built into No-MASS, this allows for testing what-if scenarios with building performance simulation and provides a pragmatic basis for the modelling of the behaviours for which there is insufficient data to develop stochastic models. A Belief-Desire-Intention model is used to develop a set of goals and plans that an agent must follow to influence the environment based on their beliefs about current environmental conditions. Recommendations for the future development of stochastic models are presented based on the sensitivity analysis of the plans. A social interactions framework is developed within No-MASS to resolve conflicts between competing agents.This framework resolves situations where each agent may have different desires, for example one may wish to have a window open and another closed based on the outputs of the stochastic models. A votes casting system determines the agent choice, the most votes becomes the action acted on. No-MASS employs agent machine learning techniques that allow them to learn how to respond to the processes taking place within a building and agents can choose a strategy without the need for context specific rules. Employing these complementary techniques to support the comprehensive simulation of occupants presence and behaviour, integrated within a single platform that can readily interface with a range of building (and urban) energy simulation programs is the key contribution to knowledge from this thesis. Nevertheless, there is significant scope to extend this work to further reduce the performance gap between simulated and real world buildings