Energy Efficiency in Public Buildings through Context-Aware Social Computing (original) (raw)
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The promotion of changes in users' behaviors with the aim of saving energy consumption in public buildings is a complex task that requires the use of multiple technologies. In this sense, context-aware technologies such as Wireless Sensor Networks and Real-Time Locating Systems, along with the use of Collaborative Learning, Virtual Organizations of Agents and Social Computing, provide a great potential for the development of serious games that foster the acquisition of good energy and healthy habits among workers and users in the public building. This paper presents the development of a serious game to change the users' behaviors when using resources in public buildings using CAFCLA, a framework that allows the integration of multiple technologies that facilitate both context-awareness and social computing.
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The energy consumption of the current building stock represents about 40% of the total final energy consumption in Europe. New gamification techniques may play a significant role in helping users adopt new and more energy efficient behaviours. This paper presents the advances achieved within the context of the EU-funded project EnerGAware Energy Game for Awareness of energy efficiency in social housing communities. The main objective of the project, funded by the European Union under the Horizon2020 programme, is to reduce the energy consumption and carbon emissions in a sample of European social housing by changing the energy efficiency behaviour of the social tenants through the implementation of a serious game linked to the real energy use of the participants 19 homes
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Serious games are digital games, simulations and virtual environments designed for primary purposes (e.g. teaching, learning and training) other than pure entertainment. They are experiential environments where features such as thought-provoking, informative or stimulating are as important, if not more so, than fun or entertainment. A number of serious games have been developed for energy systems that act as educational tools and help energy consumers to better understand concepts such as resource allocation, electricity prices and grid sustainability. This paper discusses the development of a serious game, the Social Mpower, which visualises a community energy system in which players should avoid energy problems (i.e. blackouts) by individually reducing their energy consumption and sustain the Common-Pool Resource (CPR) of their community. Our experimental hypothesis is that if players are "collective aware" of their individual and community consumption, they consume energy in a more e cient and e↵ective way and therefore, they can avoid potential energy problems (i.e. blackouts). Our experimental results show that Social Mpower can be productively used as an educational tool to bring a desired change in people's behaviour towards energy consumption.
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This research is investigating the potential role of online social network based life simulation computer games as a persuasive tool for encouraging users to reduce their domestic energy consumption. Games such as 'Farmville'which runs on the Facebook platform have attracted millions of users worldwide who create simple virtual worlds where they interact with others and carry out everyday activities to earn tokens to spend within the game. Applying a User Centred Design (UCD) and in particular persona based design approach, this research is ...