Modeling and Control Beyond Static Boundaries: Integrating human-building interaction, dynamic comfort, and grid-responsive control.
About the Workshop
The energy transition creates a critical opportunity to rethink how buildings model, predict, and respond to occupant behavior. From personalized thermal comfort control and human-in-the-loop systems to data-driven behavior modeling and adaptive automation, emerging technologies enable buildings to become truly occupant-centric energy systems.
Occupant-aware approaches are essential for:
- Providing thermal, visual, and acoustic comfort while reducing energy waste
- Enabling demand response and renewable energy integration
- Supporting grid flexibility through intelligent load coordination
- Addressing equity in comfort provision across diverse populations
- Enhancing resilience during extreme weather events and grid disruptions
Despite rapid advances in reinforcement learning, IoT-enabled automation, and smart building control, occupant behavior modeling remains fragmented across disciplines. OccuSys brings together researchers and practitioners working at the intersection of human behavior, building systems, and energy management.
The workshop aims to:
- Share frameworks, datasets, and best practices for occupant-centric modeling and control
- Identify research gaps and future directions in adaptive comfort and human-aware energy systems
- Foster interdisciplinary collaboration between academia and industry
Topics of Interest
We invite original research, position papers, and work-in-progress submissions on all aspects of occupant behavior modeling and control for energy management. Topics include, but are not limited to:
- Modeling Approaches: Data-driven vs. physics-based vs. hybrid models; Personal comfort models and preference learning; Occupancy detection and prediction methods; etc.
- Control and Optimization: Occupant-centric controls; Adaptive and personalized comfort control; Model predictive control with behavior forecasting; Privacy-preserving controls; etc.
- Beyond Static Comfort Boundaries: Adaptive thermal comfort models in practice; Context-dependent comfort; Thermal comfort equity and individual differences; etc.
- Data and Benchmarking: Longitudinal studies and real-world deployment; Wearable sensors and physiological monitoring; Privacy, ethics, and user acceptance; etc.
- Integration with Energy Systems: Demand response enabled by occupant behavior prediction; Thermal energy storage and occupant flexibility; Building-to-grid services considering occupant comfort; etc.
- Theory and Methods: Interpretability and explainability in ML-based models; Validation and verification methodologies; Interdisciplinary approaches; etc.
Submission
Submissions must be unpublished and not under review for any other venue. Papers must be at most 4 pages (single-spaced, US Letter 8.5” × 11”), including figures, tables, and appendices. The format must follow the official ACM proceedings template (sigconf format) (LaTeX preferred or Word) and comply with ACM formatting requirements (9-pt font). Authors must anonymize their manuscripts by enabling the anonymous option and using the anonsuppress section where appropriate. Papers that do not comply with size, formatting, or anonymization requirements will not be reviewed.
All papers must be in Portable Document Format (PDF) and submitted via
Registration is handled through
buildsys.acm.org/2026
.
Important Dates (AoE)
- Submission: April 10, 2026
- Reviewer Deadline: April 17, 2026
- Notification: April 20, 2026
- Camera-ready: May 5, 2026
Program
The workshop agenda and speaker lineup will be posted here after notifications.
Organizing Committee
- Prof. Zoltan Nagy (TU Eindhoven)
- Prof. Michael Kane (Northeastern University)
- Dr. Martin Mosteiro Romero (TU Delft)
- Maharshi Pathak (Northeastern University)
- Dr. Wei Luo (TU Eindhoven)
- Ava Mohammadi (TU Eindhoven)
- Mahnaz Vahdat (Northeastern University)
Contact
For questions, please contact:
z.nagy@tue.nl