Occupants’ Behavioral Analysis for the Optimization of Building Operation and Maintenance: A Case Study to Improve the Use of Elevators in a University Building

The impact of the users’ behavior on the building performance is largely recognized, especially considering most of common building operation and management (O&M) tasks. Predictions of human-building interactions are essential to improve building efficiency by decreasing wastes and costs connected to O&M while satisfying the comfort level required by the occupants. At this regard, building technological systems, which status depends on the users’ movement inside the buildings, like elevators, represent one of the critical spots, especially in high-density buildings. According to a “user-centered” approach, this paper moves toward the assessment of behavioral drivers which can influence the use of elevators in public buildings to define a probability use model useful to set specific maintenance policies. In situ evaluations are performed in a university building, where flows of people are highly dependent on the indoor activities scheduled, as lessons. A multinomial logit model for the probability of elevators’ use is built depending on factors such as: floors number, movement in group, direction (upwards, downwards). Users’ fruition patterns in the university building are detected using eye-tracking techniques and questionnaires. Results show how the elevators’ use probability increases when the number of floors to cross increases, also because of perceived movement comfort, while individuals’ attention is mainly affected by posters and signage systems placed along the way. The model could be implemented in building simulation models, to predict the elevators use during the time under different circumstances, hence to optimize related O&M measures.