William O’Brien

8.5k total citations · 3 hit papers
197 papers, 6.0k citations indexed

About

William O’Brien is a scholar working on Building and Construction, Environmental Engineering and Social Psychology. According to data from OpenAlex, William O’Brien has authored 197 papers receiving a total of 6.0k indexed citations (citations by other indexed papers that have themselves been cited), including 154 papers in Building and Construction, 62 papers in Environmental Engineering and 58 papers in Social Psychology. Recurrent topics in William O’Brien's work include Building Energy and Comfort Optimization (143 papers), Facilities and Workplace Management (53 papers) and Wind and Air Flow Studies (32 papers). William O’Brien is often cited by papers focused on Building Energy and Comfort Optimization (143 papers), Facilities and Workplace Management (53 papers) and Wind and Air Flow Studies (32 papers). William O’Brien collaborates with scholars based in Canada, United States and France. William O’Brien's co-authors include H. Burak Gunay, Ian Beausoleil-Morrison, Sara Gilani, Salvatore Carlucci, Farhang Tahmasebi, Tianzhen Hong, Ardeshir Mahdavi, Brent Huchuk, Da Yan and Zixiao Shi and has published in prestigious journals such as SHILAP Revista de lepidopterología, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews and Journal of Cleaner Production.

In The Last Decade

William O’Brien

190 papers receiving 5.8k citations

Hit Papers

align trajectories sort by overperformance

What are hit papers?

Hit papers significantly outperform the citation benchmark for their cohort. A paper qualifies if it has ≥500 total citations, achieves ≥1.5× the top-1% citation threshold for papers in the same subfield and year (this is the minimum needed to enter the top 1%, not the average within it), or reaches the top citation threshold in at least one of its specific research topics.

Occupant behavior modeling for building performance simulation: Current state and future challenges

2015 673 citations William O’Brien, H. Burak Gunay et al. Energy and Buildings profile →
Assessing gaps and needs for integrating building performance optimization tools in net zero energy buildings design

2013 345 citations William O’Brien et al. Energy and Buildings profile →
Introducing IEA EBC annex 79: Key challenges and opportunities in the field of occupant-centric building design and operation

2020 222 citations William O’Brien, Andreas Wagner et al. Building and Environment profile →

Author Peers

Peers are selected by citation overlap in the author's most active subfields. citations · hero ref

Author						Papers	Cites
William O’Brien	4.9k	2.0k	1.3k	878	805	197	6.0k
Ardeshir Mahdavi	3.7k 0.8×	1.8k 0.9×	793 0.6×	735 0.8×	520 0.6×	291	4.6k
Taehoon Hong	5.0k 1.0×	2.3k 1.2×	807 0.6×	593 0.7×	1.5k 1.8×	348	9.5k
Stefano Paolo Corgnati	4.1k 0.8×	1.8k 0.9×	539 0.4×	576 0.7×	740 0.9×	173	5.1k
Borong Lin	5.1k 1.0×	3.5k 1.7×	728 0.5×	984 1.1×	503 0.6×	240	7.5k
H. Burak Gunay	2.9k 0.6×	1.1k 0.5×	909 0.7×	476 0.5×	479 0.6×	84	3.4k
Guy R. Newsham	3.2k 0.6×	826 0.4×	1.5k 1.1×	624 0.7×	478 0.6×	82	4.5k
Salvatore Carlucci	3.2k 0.6×	1.8k 0.9×	449 0.3×	361 0.4×	477 0.6×	75	3.9k
Da Yan	8.1k 1.7×	3.8k 1.9×	1.2k 0.9×	1.2k 1.3×	1.7k 2.1×	247	10.5k
Roberto Lamberts	4.2k 0.8×	2.6k 1.3×	442 0.3×	540 0.6×	605 0.8×	166	5.1k
Bing Dong	3.8k 0.8×	1.5k 0.7×	509 0.4×	391 0.4×	844 1.0×	118	5.5k

Countries citing papers authored by William O’Brien

Since Specialization

Citations

This map shows the geographic impact of William O’Brien's research. It shows the number of citations coming from papers published by authors working in each country. You can also color the map by specialization and compare the number of citations received by William O’Brien with the expected number of citations based on a country's size and research output (numbers larger than one mean the country cites William O’Brien more than expected).

Fields of papers citing papers by William O’Brien

Since Specialization

Physical SciencesHealth SciencesLife SciencesSocial Sciences

This network shows the impact of papers produced by William O’Brien. Nodes represent research fields, and links connect fields that are likely to share authors. Colored nodes show fields that tend to cite the papers produced by William O’Brien. The network helps show where William O’Brien may publish in the future.

Co-authorship network of co-authors of William O’Brien

This figure shows the co-authorship network connecting the top 25 collaborators of William O’Brien. A scholar is included among the top collaborators of William O’Brien based on the total number of citations received by their joint publications. Widths of edges represent the number of papers authors have co-authored together. Node borders signify the number of papers an author published with William O’Brien. William O’Brien is excluded from the visualization to improve readability, since they are connected to all nodes in the network.

All Works

Sort: Min cites: Since: Top N: Style:

20 of 20 papers shown

O’Brien, William, et al.. (2025). Analyzing smart thermostat data to uncover trends in remote work behaviors. Energy and Buildings. 330. 115320–115320. 3 indexed citations

Gunay, Burak, et al.. (2025). The WELL Building Standard: A literature review and bibliometric analysis of a nascent field. Journal of Building Engineering. 103. 112121–112121. 1 indexed citations

Bucking, Scott, et al.. (2024). Do peak energy loads and peak GHG emissions correlate in buildings? Insights from emission duration curves and emission event duration curves analysis. Journal of Cleaner Production. 459. 142438–142438. 1 indexed citations

Gunay, Burak, et al.. (2024). Examining disparities in energy poverty and indoor environmental quality satisfaction among Canadian households. Energy Policy. 194. 114319–114319. 3 indexed citations

O’Brien, William, et al.. (2024). Simulating the impact and policy implications of telework on home energy use and emissions in Canada. Science and Technology for the Built Environment. 30(6). 675–692. 1 indexed citations

O’Brien, William, et al.. (2024). Sustainability of telework: Systematic quantification of the impact of teleworking on the energy use and emissions of offices and homes. Journal of Building Engineering. 91. 109438–109438. 3 indexed citations

Johra, Hicham, et al.. (2024). Exploring occupant detection model generalizability for residential buildings using supervised learning with IEQ sensors. Building and Environment. 254. 111319–111319. 7 indexed citations

O’Brien, William, et al.. (2023). It's not just technical - Socio-technical challenges to the efficient operation of commercial office buildings. Energy Research & Social Science. 100. 103101–103101. 3 indexed citations

Andargie, Maedot S., Marianne F. Touchie, William O’Brien, & Markus Müller-Trapet. (2023). A field study of the relationship between sound insulation and noise annoyance, activity disturbance and wellbeing in multi-unit residences. Applied Acoustics. 206. 109291–109291. 9 indexed citations

10.

Gunay, Burak, et al.. (2023). Zone-Level Anomaly Detection in VAV Terminal Units Using an Unsupervised Learning Approach. 481–484. 1 indexed citations

11.

O’Brien, William, et al.. (2023). Review and exploration of relationships between domains impacted by telework: A glimpse into the energy and sustainability considerations, COVID-19 implications, and future research. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. 183. 113464–113464. 8 indexed citations

12.

Gunay, Burak, et al.. (2022). A virtual meter-based visualization tool to present energy flows in multiple zone variable air volume air handling unit systems. Building and Environment. 221. 109275–109275. 6 indexed citations

13.

O’Brien, William, et al.. (2022). A methodology to integrate maintenance management systems and BIM to improve building management. Science and Technology for the Built Environment. 28(8). 1097–1114. 16 indexed citations

14.

Touchie, Marianne F., et al.. (2022). High‐rise residential building ventilation in cold climates: A review of ventilation system types and their impact on measured building performance. Indoor Air. 32(11). e13158–e13158. 8 indexed citations

15.

O’Brien, William, et al.. (2021). The in-situ implementation of a feature-rich thermostat: A building engineering and human factors approach to improve perceived control in offices. Building and Environment. 199. 107884–107884. 6 indexed citations

16.

Afroz, Zakia, et al.. (2021). An inquiry into the capabilities of baseline building energy modelling approaches to estimate energy savings. Energy and Buildings. 244. 111054–111054. 21 indexed citations

17.

Abdeen, Ahmed, et al.. (2021). Investigation of occupant-related energy aspects of the National Building Code of Canada: Energy use impact and potential least-cost code-compliant upgrades. Science and Technology for the Built Environment. 27(10). 1393–1424. 3 indexed citations

18.

Hobson, Brodie W., et al.. (2021). Exploring the adequacy of mechanical ventilation for acceptable indoor air quality in office buildings. Science and Technology for the Built Environment. 28(2). 275–288. 3 indexed citations

19.

Wagner, Andreas & William O’Brien. (2020). Virtual special issue editorial – State-of-the-art in occupant-centric building design and operation: A collection of reviews. Building and Environment. 180. 107026–107026. 1 indexed citations

20.

Ouf, Mohamed, William O’Brien, & Burak Gunay. (2019). On quantifying building performance adaptability to variable occupancy. Building and Environment. 155. 257–267. 37 indexed citations

Rankless uses publication and citation data sourced from OpenAlex, an open and comprehensive bibliographic database. While OpenAlex provides broad and valuable coverage of the global research landscape, it—like all bibliographic datasets—has inherent limitations. These include incomplete records, variations in author disambiguation, differences in journal indexing, and delays in data updates. As a result, some metrics and network relationships displayed in Rankless may not fully capture the entirety of a scholar's output or impact.

Explore authors with similar magnitude of impact