A review of occupant-centric control strategies for adaptive facades

Abstract

The dynamic nature of daylight requires a responsive strategy by utilizing adaptive facades (AFs) as shading systems to control the indoor environment. Controlling an adaptive façade's performance is feasible either through an automatic control strategy without any user interventions or occupant-centric control strategy allowing user interactions. Lack of occupant-centric control is experienced when a fully-automatic control is operating the shading system. In addition, limiting or disabling users to overrule their local environment showed negative impacts on their overall satisfaction and comfort. To this end, this paper reviews the current state-of-the-art with respect to occupant-centric control strategies in the literature and identifying the research gaps for future investigations. As a major finding, occupant-centric control is limited to certain applications, which imposes thinking of a new innovative shading control strategy that counterbalances antagonistic phenomena and can enhance both user's comfort desires and building's energy efficiency especially in a shared working environment. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.