Accurately evaluating the annual energy performance of buildings integrated with indirect green façades (IGFs) is challenging because of the coupled interactions among vegetation, cavity airflow, and building heat transfer. This study developed a coupled resistance–capacitance (RC) energy model by adding vegetation and cavity-air nodes to a conventional building RC framework and reformulating the corresponding energy balances. The model’s thermal response was experimentally validated against summer field measurements in Shanghai, with CV-RMSE values below 5.00% for wall-surface and free-running indoor temperatures. Annual heating and cooling predictions for the bare building were benchmarked against EnergyPlus. The model was subsequently applied to investigate the hourly thermal responses of the experimental model buildings during typical weather weeks and to assess the annual energy-saving performance of IGFs across representative building prototypes in Shanghai. Results showed that IGFs exerted a pronounced thermal buffering effect, reducing maximum wall-surface temperatures by 5.43 °C during the day and elevating them by up to 0.75 °C at night in summer. The annual simulations predicted cooling energy reductions of up to 4.44% and heating penalties of up to 1.50%, yielding net annual energy savings of 0.34%–1.44% across all cases. Increasing LAI from 1 to 3 increased the estimated annual total energy-saving rate by approximately 22% to 108%, depending on the building prototype. Furthermore, a regression analysis between wall heat flux differentials and energy savings revealed that older buildings were 3.90 to 7.60 times more sensitive to wall heat flux variations than newer ones.
This study focuses on occupant behavior in office buildings and proposes a systematic framework for modeling stochastic occupant behavior based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and a fuzzy multi-behavior decision-making (FMB) model. The research initially focuses on the three core components of the TPB: attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control, and designs a questionnaire for investigating energy-related occupant behaviors and potential influencing factors. The influence of these three factors on energy-related behaviors was identified through structural equation modeling (SEM) of the survey data, leading to the establishment of three key evaluation criteria for the FMB model: comfort, economy, and norm compliance. Based on the TPB this study integrates fuzzy decision methods and survival analysis to predict the priority and duration of building occupants’ multi-equipment operation behaviors. Additionally, Bayesian inference is employed to effectively identify the multi-state choices in shading adjustments. The validation results demonstrated that the proposed model effectively replicates users’ actual energy-use decision-making processes. The findings offer a scientific methodology for modeling occupant behavior in office buildings, contributing to the improvement of occupant behavior modeling accuracy in real-world environments.
Decarbonization of the residential built environment requires widespread adoption of social practices that improve energy efficiency, support electrification, and integrate renewable energy. Real estate agents can influence how decarbonization interventions are interpreted at open houses and at the point-of-sale, especially given they must frame the homes they sell for the imagined lifestyle demands of future occupants, yet their role in shaping buyer-facing narratives is unclear. Drawing on qualitative data from “mystery shopper” participant-observer visits to 60 open houses in United States cities Boston and Phoenix, this study investigates how real-estate agents frame residential sustainability amenities to potential buyers. We find that agents rarely volunteer information about sustainability features unless prompted by interested buyers. When prompted, agents offered ambivalence about solar technologies, particularly leased systems, but mobilize more favorable frameworks for other amenities, including electric vehicle charging capability and high-quality insulation. Applying Shove’s account of resource-intensive practices organized around “cleanliness, comfort, and convenience,” we show that, when discussed, sustainability amenities were most often favorably communicated when supporting convenience, followed by comfort and protection. These findings highlight real estate agents as overlooked intermediaries in residential decarbonization and suggest that point-of-sale communication may shape whether sustainability features in residential exchange are recognized as desirable or risky.
Built environment characteristics influence humans’ multisensory perception experiences and their cross-modal interactions in urban settings. With the rapid accumulation of human sensing data (HSD), empirical research in this domain has experienced explosive growth in recent years. However, the existing literature lacks a comprehensive and systematic review that synthesises the research trends, core patterns, limitations, and future directions within this interdisciplinary field. Following the PRISMA guidelines, this review systematically searched Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed, ultimately including 472 eligible empirical studies. Leveraging large language model (LLM)-assisted analysis, a situational context framework and thematic clustering were applied. This review is positioned as a structured thematic synthesis and research-landscape mapping. The findings reveal interdisciplinary characteristics and a spatiotemporal agglomeration in East Asia. The final synthesis is organised into four core clusters: (A) sensory neurophysiological mechanisms, (B) data-driven perceptual quantification, (C) spatiotemporal perception equity, and (D) perception-based planning discussion. Specifically, Cluster A reports cross-modal synergy, compensation or interference in a subset of interaction studies, mainly in micro-scale or controlled settings; these are patterns in that subset, not field-wide mechanisms. Cluster B has facilitated a shift from traditional subjective scales toward the integration of user-generated content (UGC) and physiological signals for quantification. Cluster C highlights heterogeneity in the distribution of five-sense perception across space, time and social groups. Cluster D underscores planning-oriented studies that draw on five-sense evidence to inform design guidance rather than documented planning outcomes. Read together, immediate environment-perception links are often cross-modal and non-linear but remain micro-scale; scalable maps are vision- and text-heavy and mostly associational; the same setting is not felt uniformly across time, place and groups; planning uses perceptual evidence mainly as guidance. The four orientations have each accumulated substantial work; what remains weak is the link among them. Overall, this review offers a context framework and a four-cluster categorisation to locate current HSD-based research on the built environment and multisensory perception, and to provide a directional map for human-centred urban planning and subsequent empirical work.
High-intensity urban lifestyles have increased the need for restorative strategies that can be integrated into built environments. Natural visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli are widely used in biophilic design, yet their relative restorative effects have not been sufficiently compared. This systematic review and meta-analysis synthesized evidence on the physiological and psychological restorative effects of unimodal natural sensory stimuli. A total of 15 studies were included and provided comparable data for quantitative analysis. Pairwise meta-analyzes were conducted for visual-auditory, visual-olfactory, and auditory-olfactory comparisons across physiological outcomes, including heart rate (HR), heart rate variability, and blood pressure, as well as psychological outcomes related to positive and negative affect. A network meta-analysis was also performed to compare the relative effects of the three modalities on HR. For physiological outcomes, no consistent between-modality differences were observed across most outcomes. Visual stimuli may produce a greater reduction in HR than auditory stimuli, although this finding should be interpreted cautiously. The HR-based network meta-analysis ranked visual stimuli highest (SUCRA = 83.6%), followed by olfactory stimuli. For psychological outcomes, visual stimuli were more effective than auditory stimuli in reducing negative affect, whereas olfactory stimuli were more effective than visual stimuli in enhancing positive affect and more effective than auditory stimuli in reducing negative affect. Sensitivity analyzes and meta-regression suggested that exposure duration and stimulus characteristics may partly explain between-study heterogeneity. These findings provide preliminary evidence of relative differences among natural sensory modalities across physiological and psychological outcomes. Given the limited number of studies and substantial methodological heterogeneity, future research should adopt standardized protocols and report detailed stimulus parameters to strengthen evidence-based biophilic design.
