The research objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program award is to understand, improve and predict the dynamics that occur in networks of building occupants when individuals in these networks can view energy utilization of their peers. In pursuing this objective, this research aims to address the grand challenge of reducing building energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions. Four energy utilization experiments in residential and administrative buildings will be performed to empirically assess and model the complex inter-relationships between occupants and occupant networks in influencing energy use decisions. These experimental results will be integrated into an agent-based simulation model to predict the impact of building occupant network dynamics on achieving sustained energy conservation in and across buildings. The pedagogical objective of this CAREER program award is to combine in-class experiments and pedagogical simulations to achieve critical thinking and higher order learning that fosters the dynamic engineer of the future called for by the National Academy of Engineering and the American Society of Civil Engineers.
If successful, the results of this research will enhance our understanding of energy efficiency in buildings by establishing the critical influence of social and physical networks on achieving sustained energy conservation in buildings. The research will contribute simultaneously to the meeting of ambitious greenhouse gas emission targets set by our local and national governments and to the creation of fundamental knowledge on network dynamics. The research will contribute a new perspective on networks within which building occupants associate themselves with energy conservation practices and the diffusion of those practices within building occupant networks that will be measured and explained. The findings and the resulting simulation will be integrated into university and K-12 teaching and community outreach.
