Operation strategy of public building: Implications from trade-off between carbon emission and occupant satisfaction

Large amount of energy is consumed to meet user satisfaction in public buildings, which causes carbon emission and results in environmental problem. A direct method to reduce this carbon emission is restricting opening area in public buildings. However, restricting opening area causes occupant satisfaction reduction. Trade-off carbon emission and occupant satisfaction needs to be concerned in building operation strategy design. In this paper, we developed a new integrated modelling method to trade-off between the carbon emission and occupant satisfaction of restriction strategies. We designed a case study in the sixth teaching building (STB) in Tsinghua University. Survey and field investigation were conducted to obtain data and build model. Integrated model result showed that satisfaction increases with the increase of carbon emission, while there exists cluster division and marginal diminishing patterns. By analyzing the performance of strategies with different calculation methods, we found that most optimal strategies open section B and C in STB. Meanwhile, when occupant number is 1,000, 2000 and 4,000, corresponding average satisfaction is 71.4%, 58.8% and 40.4%. It indicates that optimal operation strategy performance changes with the increase of occupant number, but the fluctuation is relatively mild. This integrated model has prospect in guiding energy conservation operation strategy design. It also supports real time monitoring and has potential in interactive platform application.