ComfortLab

To improve energy efficiency in office and administrative buildings, many technical solutions are developed and applied. The actual effectiveness and sustainability of these solutions are often below expectations. This is mainly due to the fact that users have a considerable influence on energy consumption. Everyday behavior patterns and routines often lead to (negative) rebound effects that consume resources and generate costs.

The research project ComfortLab aims at the continuation of the EnSpar project, in which possible strategies to support energy saving behaviour and possible energy efficiency strategies were developed. Within the framework of the current project, this systemic and interactive design perspective is taken up in order to further develop approaches of a "user-centered building management system" (UC-BMS) in a prototype and to test and evaluate them in a property of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conversation and Nuclear Safety" (BMU). Piaf was developed in 2017 as part of the EE-Office project together with the Düsseldorf design studio twistid and has since been tested and further optimised in various research projects.

An user-centered building management system not only helps to reduce energy consumption, but also to increase the well-being and work productivity of the users in the office. This requires a systemic design perspective with coordinated strategies and appropriate interaction design. In addition to the continuation of the EnSpar project, further synergy effects are also being sought in relation to the project in another property of the BMU. The goal is to obtain an evaluated catalog of measures that can also be applied in other departments and federal properties.

In order to achieve the goals outlined above, the project is divided into three work packages (WP), in which the implementation and evaluation of a strategy to support the energy saving behavior of users in office and administrative buildings on the basis of different communication feedback systems will be tested in a pilot test (WP1). This is followed by the evaluation of the results (WP2) and their textual and graphical summary in the form of a final report (WP3).