Measuring the Effectiveness of an Immersive Virtual Environment for the Modeling and Prediction of Occupant Behavior

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to determine a procedure or methodology for validating the effectiveness of immersive virtual environment (IVE) applications to studies of occupant behavior. In recent decades, IVE experiments have become increasingly popular in various fields of study such as healthcare, education, science and engineering. They have been effectively utilized to replicate field experiences that are costly or risky in research contexts. Furthermore, this paper proposes to use IVE in initial building designs to identify the most significant predictors of users’ lighting-use behavior. The authors are interested in exploring the extent to which occupants’ responses in IVE accurately reflect those in-situ. In fact, the ultimate goal of this study is to enhance IVE research designs for measuring occupants’ energy behaviors and integrate the results with the existing energy simulation models and reduce the uncertainties in estimates.