Achieving Indoor Thermal Comfort Using AI-Controlled Shading in Hot Arid Climates in Office Buildings

Abstract

Hot arid and desert regions like the MENA, Middle East and North Africa, regions are characterized by high levels of solar radiation and high temperatures. Incoming solar radiation on buildings affect the thermal ad visual comfort of building occupants. Large glazed buildings allow solar radiation to get inside the building enhancing visual comfort, but also it affects thermal comfort and causes glare. The building envelope is the main mediator between the outdoor environment and solar radiation and the indoor of buildings in terms of visual and thermal comfort. Climate change resulted in excessive solar radiation which affects thermal and visual comfort in buildings. While solar radiation is considered a potential as renewable energy source, it is now a great challenge to be controlled inside buildings. Daylight can be optimized by different strategies in order to achieve thermal and visual comfort in buildings. This paper presents a study of how to achieve thermal comfort in hot arid climates using an Artificial Intelligence AI-controlled shading system. The proposed AI- controlled shading is applied to an office building in Egypt to check the reduction in energy consumption and enhancement in thermal comfort. This study concluded that the proposed AI- controlled shading system dropped the indoor temperature by 4°C and reduced energy consumption by 25% while thermal comfort complaints decreased by 77.78% and glare difficulties by 76%.