Philip Agee, a PhD candidate within Virginia Tech’s Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, traveled to Switzerland’s Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) to attend BEHAVE 2018. This is the 5th European Conference on Behavior and Energy Efficiency. His trip and research was supported by Dr. Andrew McCoy, Head of the Department of Building Construction, Director, of the Virginia Center for Housing Research at Virginia Tech and Dr. Freddy Paige, Assistant Professor VCEMP/Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Philip Agee spent his time in Zurich, Zermatt and Lucerne where he visited several construction sites. These sites included urban projects, vertical/high-rise construction, residential projects and a glacier observatory being constructed at 12,787 feet. “Switzerland has awesome infrastructure. I was impressed by their train and rail infrastructure, super insulated buildings, architecture and the Swiss method of wrapping all buildings with scaffolding systems,” Agee said. The purpose of BEHAVE 2018 is to bring together researchers, policy makers, and practitioners to discuss problems and measures in the field of behaviors related to end-use energy and sufficiency and the adaption of low-carbon technologies. As such, it focused on various fields of research, innovation and knowledge transfer. This is a multi-disciplinary conference. Engineers, economists, behavior scientists, policy experts and others focused on understanding behavior impacts on energy use. “’Smart’ buildings are becoming popular throughout Europe, but there are growing concerns that designers are failing to integrate human factors and needs into their designs, leading to misalignment between user (occupant) needs and design,” Agee said. This conference gave attendees the opportunity to learn from Europe’s experiences as the United States begins to integrate “smart” buildings in our infrastructure.
Agee gave a presentation at BEHAVE 2018 titled “Macroergonomics: A Path to Understanding Zero-Energy Energy Builder-Developers” which was inspired by the lessons learned in the Myers-Lawson School of Construction. Discussions included the function allocation method for assigning levels of automation in human-machine relationships. Agee’s presentation was well received by the audience.
