Smart buildings are complex systems, yet architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) professionals often perform their work without considering the human factors of building occupants. Traditionally, the AEC industry has employed a linear design and delivery approach. As buildings become smarter, the AEC industry must adapt. To maximize human well-being and the operational performance of smart buildings, an iterative, human-centred approach must be employed. The omission of human factors in the design and delivery of smart building systems risks misalignment between occupant-user needs and the AEC industry’s perception of occupant-user needs. This research proposes a human-centred approach to smart housing. The study employed a multi-phase, mixed-methods research design. Data were collected from 309 high performance housing units in the United States. Longitudinal energy use data, occupant surveys, and semi-structured interviews are the primary data inputs. Affinity diagramming was leveraged to categorize the qualitative data. The output of the affinity diagramming analysis and energy analysis led to the development of data-driven Personas that communicate smart housing user needs. While these data were gathered in the United States, researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers can leverage the human-centred approach presented in this paper toward the design of other human-centred buildings and infrastructure.

The behaviors of building occupants have continued to perplex scholars for years in our attempts to develop models for energy efficient housing. Building simulations, project delivery approaches, policies, and more have fell short of their optimistic goals due to the complexity of human behavior. As a part of a multiphase longitudinal affordable housing study, this dataset represents energy and occupant behavior attributes for 6 affordable housing units over nine months in Virginia, USA which are not performing to the net-zero energy standard they were designed for. This dataset provides researchers the ability to analyze the following variables: energy performance, occupant behaviors, energy literacy, and ecological perceptions. Energy data is provided at a 1 Hz sampling rate for four circuits: main, hot water heater, dryer, and HVAC. Building specifications, occupancy, weather data, and neighboring building energy use data are provided to add depth to the dataset. This dataset can be used to update building energy use models, predictive maintenance, policy frameworks, construction risk models, economic models, and more.

Student career satisfaction expectations and college experiences are an underutilized map toward attracting and sustaining the interest of underrepresented groups (URGs) in the civil engineering and construction industry. URGs provide indispensable contributions to the development of the built environment; however, URGs in civil engineering have not received sufficient attention to their unique expectations and experiences. Furthermore, diversity and inclusion efforts still are special practices in civil engineering, and are far from a conventional factor of professional respectability. Leveraging a national survey data set of responses from senior level undergraduate engineering students ($n=\mathrm{4,605}$ ), this study found measurable differences in career satisfaction expectations and college experiences between URGs and non-URGs in civil engineering. From the survey, 830 senior-level students majoring in civil engineering and construction related fields provided their career satisfaction expectations and undergraduate cocurricular experiences. Welch’s $t\text{-}test$ and Hedges’ $g$ were used to measure the significant differences in career satisfaction expectations between URGs and non-URGs. A frequency distribution was created and paired with chi-squared test for independence and Cramér’s V to measure the difference in undergraduate participation in cocurricular activities between URGs and non-URGs. The results of this study showed URGs’ career satisfaction expectations and cocurricular activities significantly differed from those of non-URGs. URG students reported more interest in helping others and in volunteering with charity groups in their careers. URG students also reported higher participation in cocurricular activities such as contributing as a member of an organization for women and/or minorities in engineering, acting as a member of an outreach club, and working a work-study or other type of job to pay for college. The findings presented in this paper highlight the need for the civil engineering profession to move beyond monolithic traditions, which can perpetuate exclusion.

Civil engineers and architects are both trained in design thinking, but they approach the process of design from differing perspectives largely due to the divergence in their educational curriculums. With an interest in the effect of differing educational perspectives on design thinking outcomes, comparisons were made between the self-identified design thinking abilities of students in their final year of undergraduate civil engineering or architecture programs. Perceived design thinking ability was evaluated through a survey that was distributed to students enrolled in 4-year institutions across the United States. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) test was used to compare responses between the civil engineering ($n=356$ ) and architecture ($n=335$ ) student samples. There is a significant difference in perceived design thinking ability between the groups. Architecture students score higher than civil engineering students on all design thinking traits. Based on these results, the civil engineering curriculum may benefit from the incorporation of pedagogy that emphasizes design thinking, like studio-based learning.