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，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在一起，探索识别和告知人们“日常活动中具有碳影响的关键时刻”的可行性，以便他们可以单独和集体地节省开支。我们将使用一套新颖的技术和文化探测器与实际社区合作，涉及嵌入式传感器，智能手机应用程序，聚合的“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，由实验数据支持，显示我们的干预反馈给最终用户的影响。我们的软件、高级结果、算法和模型将被置于公共领域，并通过我们的参与计划进行传播，例如与当地学校一起开发教材。我们的假设是，人们不知道他们直接和间接的能源使用及其相关的气候变化影响：这是理解如何实现“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：1。收集有关能源使用和个人相关碳足迹的基线数据;2.开发实时的财务和环境权衡模型，以确定节约的机会;3.向个人传达节省的机会，提高认识，并使其易于绘制家庭“能源相关实验”的效果; 4.提供用于将使用与一个人的社交网络中的其他人进行比较的方法i）作为激励，以及ii）提高对集体行动（例如乘车共享）的低成本机会的认识;5.创建在线资源和教学材料，将我们的发现传达给研究小组以外的更广泛人群。我们已经与加洛韦碳行动项目（一个拥有2，800人的社区）的家庭建立了联系，他们承诺支持我们，并进入三个社区。这是一个完美的补充，可以从最终用户那里收集真实的世界数据和调查结果，并传达我们的调查结果，并产生重大的现实影响。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，帮助我们向当地社区传达关键课程。

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.