Skip to main content
European Commission logo
français français
CORDIS - Résultats de la recherche de l’UE
CORDIS
CORDIS Web 30th anniversary CORDIS Web 30th anniversary

DESIGN OF AN INNOVATIVE ENERGY-AWARE IT ECOSYSTEM FOR MOTIVATING BEHAVIOURAL CHANGES TOWARDS THE ADOPTION OF ENERGY EFFICIENT LIFESTYLES

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ENTROPY (DESIGN OF AN INNOVATIVE ENERGY-AWARE IT ECOSYSTEM FOR MOTIVATING BEHAVIOURAL CHANGES TOWARDS THE ADOPTION OF ENERGY EFFICIENT LIFESTYLES)

Période du rapport: 2017-03-01 au 2018-11-30

The vision of the ENTROPY project modeling and Analysis and Recommendtion and Gamification eras. Internet of Things technologies are exploited for the proper and energy efficient interconnection of a heterogeneous set of sensor nodes (e.g. smart energy meters, sensors interacting with microgeneration infrastructure, sensors in smart phones), the collection of data based on Mobile Crowd Sensing Mechanisms exploiting the power of the collection of data from a critical mass of interested people and the application of proper communication networking schemes with regards to data collection. Advanced Data Modeling and Analysis techniques are applied for the modelling of the collected data –both from sensor networks as well as directly from end users- and the extraction of advanced knowledge by exploiting the power of Semantic Web techniques, Linked Data and Data Analytics. Focus is given on the development of personalised mobile applications and games targeted at providing energy related information to end users, triggering interaction with relevant users in social networks (e.g. users in a specific area within a city), increasing their awareness with regards to ways to achieve energy consumption savings in their daily activities and adopt energy efficient lifestyles based on a set of recommendations and motives targeted to their culture. The engagement and direct inclusion of end users within the diverse components of the provided IT ecosystem is going to be strongly supported.
We argue that recent innovations in
- the Internet of Things (IoT) research and Sensor Networks technologies, enhanced by state-of-the-art Opportunistic and Autonomous Computing principles towards the realization of smart, reliable, energy efficient and self-aware Internet-of-Things infrastructures, can support the development and deployment of an extensible, scalable architecture that will facilitate the real-time or almost real-time monitoring of the energy consumption, the environmental impact and footprint of the daily activities of citizens and the overall footprint of buildings;
- the evolvement of Mobile Crowd Sensing mechanisms for soliciting feedback from a large group of people, acquiring knowledge from a set of devices and social networks feeds, permit to involve citizens to both participate and use the mobile crowd sensing applications;
- the big and sensor data streams aggregation and analytics technologies, empowered by Linked Data technologies and lightweight semantic models, can enable the typical representation and integration of energy consumption data and their environmental impact parameters along the daily activities of citizens and in correlation with their behavioural profile and lifestyle;
- the design of Lifestyle Recommenders for generating and providing suggestions for energy efficient lifestyles, can support gradual behavioural changes of citizens and their engagement on every-day environmental friendly activities;
- the Gamification techniques for describing the process and outcome where the fundamental building blocks of games are introduced in situations (and contexts), permit their transformation into game-like experiences for the citizens;
- the development of Serious Games that combine the digital and the physical worlds, stimulate in this way collaboration and enforce the achievement of sustainable results through the direct engagement of citizens; and
- the design of Cleanweb solutions by exploiting the revolutionary growth in mobile, social, sensors, processing power, big data analytics, and other information technologies is creating powerful new opportunities to address the world's critical resource challenges, leading to more efficient energy use, accelerating the adoption of clean technologies and spreading more sustainable behaviours globally.
The proposed ENTROPY Ecosystem is based on four main technology pillars, namely the exploitation of the advances in the IoT and IPv6 technologies, the extraction of advanced knowledge based on the power of data modeling and analytics, the design of recommendation mechanisms for providing tailor made efficiency insights and motives and the development of personalized data driven applications (including serious games and mobile applications).

As was mentioned in the previous report (M1-M18) the main achievement was the definition of the architecture and platform based on a flexible structure providing a solution to the four main pillars mentioned previously. This was achieved as results of the work of WP1, WP2 and WP3 and the initial integration within WP4 of the proposed approaches for IoT integration, data modeling and semantic descriptions over a FIWARE based platform extended with analytics and interoperable with a personalized app and a serious game solution. Once the project has developed the infrastructure based on the IT platform and the pilots with sensors and actuators needed to prepare a campaign with end users to validate the approach and the technologies being defined.

In the second half of the project (M19-M39) the main efforts have been driven to accomplish with the WP4 and WP5 tasks. As a result, the Entropy Framework has been developed, integrated and tested, jointly with the Energy Awareness and Treasure Hunt apps. All together has been cyclically tested and refined in consecutive instances of the Entropy experiment, also called Entropy campaigns. In parallel, an evaluation process has been performed, generating as a result a set of useful lessons learnt. A study of the socioeconomic impact of the proposed solution has also been carried out in the last months.
The ENTROPY project proposes mechanisms that adopt novel IoT and Data Management principles, aiming at the provision of an innovative IT ecosystem that will provide a set of services and applications targeted to behavioural changes of citizens with regards to the adoptions of energy efficient lifestyles and the improvement of the ecological footprint of buildings. The project’s vision for achieving such a behavioural change as well as the provision of energy efficient ICT solutions is based on four fundamental concepts; advances in the Internet of Things based on the support of IPv6 characteristics and autonomic networking functionalities, advances in Data Modelling and Fusion mechanisms for meaningful representation of the available data and extraction of advanced knowledge and analytics, advances in the design of Recommendation mechanisms for the provision of environmental friendly oriented recommendations and advances in the design of Gamification techniques for the provision of the fundamental building blocks towards the development of serious games.
The ENTROPY IT ecosystem conceptual architecture is consisted of four layers, each one of them with a discrete role and a set of assigned functionalities: the IoT Communications Layer, the Data Modeling and Fusion Layer, the Algorithmic Design and Deployment Layer and the Services and Applications’ Provision Layer. (See figure)
Entropy Architecture