MOBAPY: Modelling Household Adaptation to Summer Heat in Urban Environments Using Agent-Based Simulation

With heatwaves becoming increasingly frequent and intense in recent years, summer comfort is now a major issue for the design of low-energy buildings. Currently, most French homes are not equipped with air conditioning. To prevent the widespread adoption of this energy-intensive equipment while limiting indoor thermal discomfort during heatwaves, it is crucial to accurately design and assess climate adaptation measures. Occupants actively employ various strategies to limit overheating inside their dwellings, adapting their actions on the specific constraints they face. However, they are still frequently treated as passive entities in building performance simulations. This paper introduces an agent-based model, MOBAPY, developed to simulate the summer adaptive behaviour of households in urban dwellings. Grounded in qualitative data derived from semi-structured interviews, the model integrates commonly reported actions for one occupant profile, including the operation of windows, solar shading devices, air conditioning, and fans, alongside clothing adjustments. MOBAPY is applied to one case study: an urban dwelling, simulated under multiple climate scenarios and varying behavioural constraints within a building energy modelling framework. The results highlight the significant impact of occupant behaviour on summer comfort results for this occupant profile in a well-insulated dwelling. Notably, under the most severe future climate scenario, the percentage of uncomfortable occupied time drops to 20% when behaviour is unconstrained, whereas it surges to 68% under highly constrained conditions.