Energy Efficiency through the Implementation of an AI Model to Predict Room Occupancy Based on Thermal Comfort Parameters

• Main Authors: Abdel-Razek, S.A (Author), Alshehri, A. (Author), Elzeki, O.M (Author), Marie, H.S (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI 2022
• Subjects: artificial intelligence; energy efficiency; healthy cities; room occupancy; smart buildings; smart cities; sustainability; sustainable development goals; thermal comfort; user-centered design
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 Room occupancy prediction based on indoor environmental quality may be the breakthrough to ensure energy efficiency and establish an interior ambience tailored to each user. Identifying whether temperature, humidity, lighting, and CO2 levels may be used as efficient predictors of room occupancy accuracy is needed to help designers better utilize the readings and data collected in order to improve interior design, in an effort to better suit users. It also aims to help in energy efficiency and saving in an ever-increasing energy crisis and dangerous levels of climate change. This paper evaluated the accuracy of room occupancy recognition using a dataset with di-verse amounts of light, CO2, and humidity. As classification algorithms, K-nearest neighbors (KNN), hybrid Adam optimizer–artificial neural network–back-propagation network (AO–ANN (BP)), and decision trees (DT) were used. Furthermore, this research is based on machine learning interpretability methodologies. Shapley additive explanations (SHAP) improve interpretability by estimating the significance values for each feature for classifiers applied. The results indicate that the KNN performs better than the DT and AO-ANN (BP) classification models have 99.5%. Though the two classifiers are designed to evaluate variations in interpretations, we must ensure that they have accurate detection. The results show that SHAP provides successful implementation following these metrics, with differences detected amongst classifier models that support the assumption that model complexity plays a significant role when predictability is taken into account. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.