OBPlatform

A package to interact and download behavior data from ASHRAE Global Occupant Behavior Database. Currently available on PyPI and conda-forge. More features coming in the furture.

Features

• List all behavior types available in the database.
• Download data archive (ZIP file) based on behavior type and study id inputs (with progress bar).
• Query studies based on (behaviors, countries, cities, (building type + room type))
• Query available behavior types based on study ids

Installation

poetry

poetry install

pip

pip install --upgrade obplatform

conda

conda install -c conda-forge obplatform

For Python 3.10: If you see an error like the following when resolving dependencies, it's caused by a bug in conda with Python 3.10.

Collecting package metadata (current_repodata.json): done
Solving environment: failed with initial frozen solve. Retrying with flexible solve.
Collecting package metadata (repodata.json): done
Solving environment: failed with initial frozen solve. Retrying with flexible solve.

PackagesNotFoundError: The following packages are not available from current channels:

  - python=3.1

Three possible solutions:

1. Create a new conda environment with Python <3.10.
2. Upgrade conda to a new version. (conda released 4.11.0 on 11/22/2021 at GitHub, which fixed the bug for Python 3.10. However, it will still take some time before conda 4.11.0 is available on Anaconda Cloud).
3. Use mamba, which is a reimplementation of the conda package manager in C++. It is much faster and contains less bugs.

mamba

Once you activate the environment through conda or micromamba:

mamba install -c conda-forge obplatform

Example

import logging
import zipfile

import pandas as pd

from obplatform import Connector, logger

connector = Connector()

# List all behaviors available in the database
print(connector.list_behaviors())

# Print progress information
# Comment out the following line to hide progress information
logger.setLevel(logging.INFO)

# Download Plug Load + Occupant Presence behaviors from study 22, 11, and 2.
connector.download_export(
    "data.zip",
    ["Plug_Load", "Occupancy_Measurement"],
    ["22", "11", "2"],
    show_progress_bar=True,  # False to disable progrees bar
)

behavior_type = "Plug_Load"
study_id = "22"

zf = zipfile.ZipFile("data.zip")
df = pd.read_csv(zf.open(f"{behavior_type}_Study{study_id}.csv"))
print(df.head())

# List all behaviors available in study 1, 2, 3, and 4
json_study_behaviors = connector.list_behaviors_in_studies(studies=["1", "2", "3", "4"])
print(json_study_behaviors)

# List all studies available in the database, filtered by behavior types,
# countries, cities, {building type, room_type} combinations.
json_studies = connector.list_studies(
    behaviors=["Occupancy_Measurement", "Plug_Load"],
    countries=["USA", "UK"],
    cities=["Palo Alto", "Coventry", "San Antonio"],
    buildings=[
        {
            "building_type": "Educational",
            "room_type": "Classroom",
        },
        {
            "building_type": "Educational",
            "room_type": "Office",
        },
        {
            "building_type": "Residential",
            "room_type": "Single-Family House",
        },
    ],
)
print(json_studies)

Usage

Available behavior types

Please only use the following names as input. e.g. Please use Lighting_Status (listed below) instead of Lighting Adjustment(displayed on the website).

'Plug_Load', 'Fan_Status', 'Door_Status', 'HVAC_Measurement', 'Lighting_Status', 'Occupant_Number', 'Occupancy_Measurement', 'Other_HeatWave', 'Other_Role of habits in consumption', 'Other_IAQ in Affordable Housing', 'Shading_Status', 'Window_Status'

In the next version, the package will auto detect either type of input and convert to the correct query parameter.

Note: big data

Study 2 is a special case. It has very large source files (> 2 GB) so we compressed all data in study 2 as a single .tar.gzfile. In the example above, data.zip contains a tar.gzfile along with several separate csv files from other studies. When writing libraries to read from csv file from the downloaded zip, Study 2 should be treated as a special case.

Changelog

• 2021-11-18: Release 0.1.3
• 2021-11-19: Release 0.1.4, fixed a minor issue with Python 3.10.0
• 2021-11-23: Release 1.0.0
  • Breaking changes:
    • Behavior type (query field) "Occupancy" has been renamed to "Occupancy_Measurement" to keep the name consistent. The example above has been changed accordingly. The server will reject query field "Occupancy".
  • Added endpoint to check backend server health
  • Added endpoint to query available behavior types based on Study IDs
• 2021-12-01: Release 1.1.0
  • Added endpoint to query available studies based on (behaviors, countries, cities, (building type + room type))
• 2021-12-10:
  • Breaking change: renamed Appliance Usage to Plug Load on the server end. The example code has been changed accordingly.

API Reference

https://obplatform.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html