Indoor environmental quality, individual attitudes and group dynamics in shared environments : investigations of users’ behaviour in school classrooms through a multi-level holistic approach

The estimation of the energy use of a building is a critical process, due to the exist-ing gap between actual and predicted consumptions addressed to the occupants’ behav-ior: occupants are often modelled in simplistic ways but even high performance build-ings may fail not considering energy-related behaviors. A better understanding of the us-ers’ role leads to the identification of the most suitable and effective building manage-ment strategies. According to user-centred theories, subjects behavior is influenced by the environment as well as affected by other aspects like feelings, attitudes, and social context. This perspective is quite remarkable in shared group environments, where or-ganisational, management and social practices determine individual actions. Only a mul-ti-level, multidisciplinary holistic approach, considering environmental, individual and group stimuli, can characterize the different determining factors. The proposed work aims to investigate students’ behavior and attitudes through the administration of questionnaires in a high school in Treviso. Surveys have been specifi-cally developed to meet the occupants’ target and cognitive development, and adminis-tered through an Application so as to cope with the nowadays role of ICT as a change driver in the educational sector. Data collected have been used to assess the comfort conditions inside the classrooms, focusing on students’ behavior towards discomfort in order to identify potential patterns and the reasons leading either to active or passive dy-namics. The aim is to identify users’ predominant dynamics in order to outline effective building’s systems’ management strategies and retrofit interventions to cope both with energy efficiency issues and occupants’ wellbeing.