Informing Energy Choices Using Ubiquitous Sensing

毫无疑问，我们必须减少温室气体排放，以避免灾难性的气候变化。然而，人类活动与能源和碳外部性的影响之间存在脱节。通过监测特定人类活动的能源使用情况，Ubicomp技术可以帮助我们发现这种隐藏的影响。我们的目标是将计算机科学、经济学、碳分析和社会学结合起来，探索识别和告知人们“日常活动中影响碳排放的关键时刻”的可行性，这样他们就可以单独或集体地节省开支。我们将与实际社区合作，使用一套新颖的技术和文化探针，包括嵌入式传感器，智能手机应用程序，汇总的“众包”数据和人种学实地工作，以提供对导致低碳生活方式的行为的更丰富的理解，并通过实验数据支持我们的干预将其反馈给最终用户的影响。我们的软件、高级结果、算法和模型将进入公共领域，并通过我们的参与计划进行交流，例如与当地学校开发教材。我们的假设是，人们没有意识到他们直接和间接的能源使用以及与之相关的气候变化影响：这是理解个人和社区如何实现“低碳生活”的障碍。在为期两年的可行性研究中，我们的目标是：收集能源使用的基线数据和相关的个人可归因的碳足迹；2 .开发财务和环境权衡的实时模型，以确定节约的机会；3 .向个人传达节约的机会，提高人们的意识，并使家庭“能源相关实验”的效果更容易图表化；提供在自己的社交网络中与其他人比较使用的方法，1)作为激励，2)提高对集体行动低成本机会（如拼车）的认识；创建在线资源和教学材料，将我们的发现传达给学习小组以外的更广泛的人群。我们与加洛韦碳行动项目（一个拥有2800户家庭的社区）建立了联系，他们向我们承诺支持我们，并允许我们进入三个相关社区。这对于收集来自最终用户的真实世界数据和发现，以及沟通我们的发现和具有重大的现实世界影响是一个完美的补充。我们还与当地学校建立了联系，他们愿意帮助我们开发教材，帮助我们将关键课程传达给当地社区。

There is little doubt we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change. There is however, a disconnect between human activities and impact in energy and carbon externality. By monitoring energy use for a specific human activity, Ubicomp technologies may help us uncover this hidden impact. Our aim is to bring Computer Science, Economics, Carbon Profiling and Sociology together to explore the feasibility of identifying and informing people of 'critical moments in their daily activities that have carbon impact', so they can individually and collectively make savings. We will work with an actual community using a novel set of technological and cultural probes, involving embedded sensors, smartphone applications, aggregated 'crowdsourced' data and ethnographic field work, to deliver a richer understanding of behaviour that leads to lower carbon lifestyles, backed up by experimental data showing the impact of our intervention feeding this back to end-users. Our software, high level results, algorithms and models will be placed into the public domain and communicated through our programme of engagement, such as developing teaching materials with local schools.Our hypothesis is people are unaware of their direct and indirect energy usage and its associated climate change impact: this is a barrier to understanding how to achieve 'low carbon living' personally, as communities. During a 2 year feasibility study our objectives are to:1. Gather baseline data about energy use and associated carbon footprint that is personally attributable;2. Develop real-time models of financial and environmental tradeoffs for identifing opportunities for savings;3. Communicate opportunities for making savings back to individuals, enabling greater awareness and making it easy to chart the effect of household 'energy related experiments';4. Provide methods for comparing the usage against others in one's social network i) as an incentive, and ii) to raise awareness of low cost opportunities for collective action (such as ride-sharing);5. Create online resources and teaching materials to communicate our findings to a wider population beyond the study group.We have established links with Galloway Carbon Action Project (a community of 2,800) homes who have pledged us support and access to the three communities involved. This is a perfect complement for gathering real world data and findings from end-users and for communicating our findings and having a significant real-world impact. We also have links with local schools who are prepared to help us develop teaching materials, to help us communicate the key lessons to local communities.