“RHC for Buildings and Industry” workshop 3.0

As the energy consumption habits of end users have been identified as one of the parameters influencing building performance the most, a behavioural change towards more energy efficient activities and lifestyles promises a significant potential for energy savings.

Four ongoing European projects, eTeacher, FEEdBACk, InBetween, and UtilitEE, focus on creating innovative ICT tools aiming at raising awareness towards energy efficiency, motivating end-users to adapt more sustainable routines, helping them identify energy waste and fostering the transition to overall more efficient behaviours. The developed solutions are designed to achieve a change in user mentality and establish more efficient usage habits through triggering mechanisms, informative feedback, gamification, and automation services within a human-centric and context aware framework.

In this workshop, these four projects joined forces in order to present and discuss their work and preliminary results. The latest advancements of the developed ICT tools were presented through interactive sessions, and the major opportunities and challenges arising will be discussed. The workshop aimed at presenting cutting-edge, ICT solutions based on innovative technologies incorporating a number of different aspects such as energy efficiency, smart buildings, human-centric automations etc. As all of the participating projects focus on behavioural change with focus on the successful interaction with the users, the proposed approaches are dynamic and interdisciplinary further involving social and behavioural sciences. In this way, the presented solutions were structured in such a way as to foster end-user engagement and motivation while minimizing any foreseen nuisance.