Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GREENSOUL (Eco-aware Persuasive Networked Data Devices for User Engagement in Energy Efficiency)

Teaser

GreenSoul pursues higher energy efficiency in public buildings by altering the way people use energy consuming shared and personal devices through:1) Persuades users to increase their energy-awareness and change their e-consumption habits: from social apps to interaction...

Summary

GreenSoul pursues higher energy efficiency in public buildings by altering the way people use energy consuming shared and personal devices through:
1) Persuades users to increase their energy-awareness and change their e-consumption habits: from social apps to interaction mechanisms linked to the devices
2) Embeds intelligence in the devices to let them autonomously decide about their operation mode for energy efficiency purposes in a pluggable manner to avoid costly replacement of equipment

There, the persuasion of users is particularly challenging since they hardly perceive the benefits of having eco-friendly behaviour. GreenSoul designs and develops an integrated ICT platform to:
a) Improve users awareness of their energy consumption habits.
b) Study the ecological behaviour of the people in shared environments.
c) Analyse the effectiveness of different persuasion techniques.
d) Assist users through a decision-support engine’s recommendations.
e) Provide socio-economic evidence about the viability of the changes proposed.

GreenSoul aims to prove that combined behavioural and ICT interventions over public buildings result in energy savings which surpass 20%. It is being deployed in six building pilots at different climatic areas and associated to different usage and facilities, ensuring the cross-country and cross-building analysis of the impact of GreenSoul.

Work performed

WP2: Requirements and architecture design
- Stakeholder requirements: Two types of Questionnaires were created and distributed among stakeholders
- GreenSoul scenarios: six scenarios and five Technical Use Cases have been identified
- Specification of the Functional and Non-Functional Requirements
- GreenSoul platform conceptual architecture: Three layers have been identified physical, intelligence and device
- GreenSoul Information Model (GIM) & Middleware Infrastructure: Identification of the information dependencies and knowledge share among GreenSoul components

WP3. Eco-aware and energy monitoring devices and GreenSoul platform
- Analysis of energy consumption monitoring devices: Re-design and hardware development of the new Universal Monitoring Device (UMD)
- Persuasive mechanisms for increasing e-consumption awareness: 1) 32 persuasive principles; 2) mappings of these principles to the initial prototype of the mobile app that have guided its design decisions; 3) mappings of these principles to the initial prototype of the interactive coaster (a GreenSoul-ed thing)
- GreenSoul-ed Things Design and Implementation. A lighting device and an interactive coaster associated to a smart power strip.
- GreenSoul Analytics and Decision Support Engine. The design and implementation of the first version of the GreenSoul Decision Support System (DSS).
- GreenSoul platform development and integration with GreenSoul-ed things: Redesign of former WSC\'s WeSave platform to be used in GreenSoul Project as the visualization platform

WP4. Socio-economic factors and human behaviour models for energy efficiency
- Energy-related human behaviour analysis and modelling
- User Multi-Entity Profiling: Socio-Economic, Demographic, Perception and Attitudes Towards Energy Efficiency: Intelligent user multi-entity profiling and classification mechanism that encapsulates all factors related to the eco-behaviour of occupants in public buildings, their attitudes to behave energy efficiently and their willingness to act accordingly
- Decision Knowledge Base and Persuasion Strategies: Different strategies were developed aiming on compensating the negative effects of socio-economic factors on energy saving behaviour. The right energy consuming appliances to be equipped with GreenSoul-technology, the best fitting persuasion, incentivisation and visualization for energy consumption portray and effect on energy saving success
- Development of a Novel Socio-Economic Model: A first analysis of the GreenSoul socio-economic factors has been performed, while the first version of the socio-economic model has been released

WP5. Pilots execution
- Pilot planning: Detailed description about the configuration of each of the different pilot sites within the GreenSoul project (UDEUSTO, WEIZ, ALLIA, ECOLUTION, MPH and SEVILLE)
- Platform installation and customization for pilots: Task in progress, so far different concepts of the platform have been tested and some equipment have been deployed in different pilot sites

WP6. Pilots Evaluation and Impact Assesment
- Specification of key performance indicators to measure socioeconomic and behavioral factors: Delphi methodology to select the KPI
- Baseline Creation and Measurement Snapshot generation: To provide an energy baseline model of all pilot sites the following steps have been performed, 1) energy assessment of all pilot buildings following the methodology of the norm EN16247, 2) to verify the energy savings achieved within GreenSoul, baseline model created following the guidelines of eeMeasure project

Final results

Socio-economic & behavioural modelling of shared spaces
- To exploit evidence of typical periodic or scheduled events and episodes and their respective human presence data for creating reliable and robust predictive models
- To deliver optimal human behaviour models that have been trained on the evidences from multiple sensors
- The human behaviour models are combined with energy consumption models and socio-economic variables
- To investigate and implement new algorithms for combining all the aforementioned models creating the GreenSoul model

Performance evaluation via analytics
- Analytics mechanisms for the detection of complex spatiotemporal patterns of human behaviour, energy consumption and socio-economic variables
- Novel analytical techniques for evaluating dynamic scenarios

Eco-awareness and incentivisation mechanisms
- GreenSoul determines if eco-system of devices, building assets and environments, can serve as a means to promote environmentally conscious behavior in public buildings or building of public use
- GreenSoul informs users about the human presence, collective energy consumption, potential energy saving
- Greensoul promotes intrinsic pro-energy efficiency strategies rather than extrinsic to attaint changes in energy consumption practices

Persuasion techniques for energy conservation
- Personalized eco-feedback through subtle personalized interfaces based on group profiling and user’s environmental attitudes and motivations to engage pro-environmentally
- Public eco-feedback through social networks to boost group reflection on resources wastage
- Gamification techniques to eco-educate and engaging people in a joyful and amusing manner

Linked interactive devices
- To adopt linked data principles in the energy Smart Analyser, and the devices instrumented by the Smart Adaptor
- To propose the best remote actuation mechanism to activate or to schedule future the activations of the persuasion mechanisms in the GreenSoul-ed adaptor and the devices instrumented
- To adopt a lightweight rule-engine to give some autonomy to GreenSoul-ed devices and let them make local decisions

Internet of Things platform
- Consider the user energy-awareness as one of the main pillars of our platform
- User oriented interface to configure the environment’s main goals and how to translate them into individual devices’ goals
- Add a native persuasion layer in the platform to adapt GreenSoul-ed devices’ behaviour

Website & more info

More info: http://www.greensoul-h2020.eu/.